Kuldip Bhatia Ludhiana, December 4 Hundreds of illegal colonies proliferating all around the mega city have literally become a big thorn in the flesh of licensed developers who are made to face hordes of problems at the hands of unscrupulous developers of unlicensed colonies, mainly due to lax enforcement on the part of the Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority (GLADA). Many city-based developers of approved colonies have admitted having suffered due to variety of gimmicks employed by developers of illegal colonies to dupe the gullible public by giving false and misleading advertisements in print and electronic media as well as social media platforms for selling plots in such colonies on the basis of tall promises which are never intended to be fulfilled. “Of late, some developers of unlicensed and illegal colonies have adopted a new technique to entrap unsuspecting buyers by naming their colonies similar to those developed by reputed colonizers, which ultimately cause damage to reputation and business of the licensed developers,” said Gulshan Kumar, Managing Director of GK Group, in a complaint lodged with the GLADA Chief Administrator. He said a few unscrupulous developers had carved out colonies with initials of GK and some of them had even gone to the extent of filing incomplete applications with GLADA for regularisation of their colonies which were obviously rejected due to incomplete documents or non-payment of fee. Gulshan Kumar, having developed more than a dozen duly licensed and approved colonies at Ramgarh on Ludhiana-Chandigarh Road, Dhandra Road, Sidhwan Canal Road, Sangowal, Mundian Kalan on Ludhiana-Chandigarh Road, Jawaddi Road, in Kharar and recently an affordable housing colony on Sirhind Road in Patiala, said the developers having similar sounding names or having initials of ‘GK’ in the names of their colonies were harming the name and reputation of his group. “Not only this, unsuspecting members of public could fall in their trap and waste their hard-earned money in buying plots/properties in such illegal colonies under the false impression that they were making investment in properties developed by established and reputed GK Group,” he said in the complaint. Some other city-based developers also said they had also been facing a similar situation as some unlicensed colonies were named almost similar to licensed colonies developed by them and buyers were often taken in by fraudulent tactics of unscrupulous developers. Calling upon the GLADA authorities to strengthen enforcement measures to rein in developers of illegal colonies and curb their unlawful and fraudulent acts with an iron hand, Gulshan Kumar said unless the regulatory body took a firm stand to safeguard the interests of genuine developers, the people would continue to fall prey to the developers of illegal colonies.

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