Property owners from DLF Phases 1 to 5 took to the streets in Gurugram on Thursday, marching with placards reading “Save Our Homes, Save Our Lives” and “CM Saheb Help Us”, in a show of strength against the ongoing sealing drive and demanding that the government regularise the commercial use of their residential plots instead of sealing them.
The protest followed a maha panchayat of owners held at U Block Metro Park in DLF Phase 3 under a “Stop Sealing, Stop Demolition” banner. Around 50 people took part, presenting a united front across the five colonies that have borne the brunt of the enforcement drive by the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP).
At the heart of their charter is a demand for regularisation — that the government formally approve a transit-oriented development (TOD) policy for these areas, permit higher Floor Area Ratio (FAR) and allow mixed land use, thereby legalising the very paying-guest and co-living accommodations, including those in stilt-plus-four buildings, now being sealed. Owners argued that these facilities largely house corporate employees working in Gurugram’s offices and that sealing them turns out a key section of the city’s working population.
The owners framed the crackdown as arbitrary, their placards capturing the grievance pointedly — that renting out an entire house is treated as legal while renting out a single room is branded illegal.
The protest comes amid a sustained restoration drive in which the DTCP, acting on Punjab and Haryana High Court directions, has sealed hundreds of illegally run PG rooms across DLF’s colonies for violating zoning norms, building plans and development control regulations. The department has since paused sealing for about a week and circulated a public advisory giving occupants until June 30 to make alternative arrangements.
The demand for blanket regularisation, however, has split opinion. One section argues that if these establishments are to continue, they should be formally declared commercial entities and made to pay commercial property tax and commercial power tariffs, ending the practice of running businesses on residential rates. Others have pushed back firmly, warning that regularising such density would overwhelm colonies whose water, sewerage and road infrastructure was designed for a fixed population and cannot be expanded to absorb the load. Allowing unchecked commercialisation, they caution, risks the eventual collapse of civic services in these neighbourhoods.
With the June 30 deadline approaching and owners now pressing for a policy route out of the impasse, the standoff sets up a larger question for the state government — whether to enforce the existing residential zoning or rewrite it to reflect the commercial reality that has already taken root across old Gurugram.
