The High Court has Ordered the Mumbai Municipal Corporation to Transfer the Worli Plot Title to Century Textiles.

The Bombay High Court has ordered the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to give Century Textiles & Industries ownership of a 6acre plot in the city’s affluent Worli neighbourhood within eight weeks.

The publicly traded textiles-to-realty company approached the city council in March 2014, seeking that a formal deed of transfer for the site, which contains a residential colony of its employees, be executed. It went to the High Court in December 2016 after officials refused to respond to its application and repeated letters asking the transfer of the land title.

The High Court highlighted in a recent 89-page judgement that, despite multiple requests from the Birla Group, the corporation had not officially told Century Textile that it had refused the firm’s claim to conveyance of the land until the company filed the court suit.

“It appears that, had the petitioners not sought this court, petitioner No.1 (Century Textile) would have continued indefinitely to beg Respondent No.1 (the civic body) for a formal conveyance without any reason for Respondent No.1’s non-execution of the same,” the court ruled.

The six-acre plot is part of the company’s 30-acre Worli property. In April 1918, Century Textiles applied to the trustees for the Improvement of the City of Bombay under the City of Bombay Improvement Act, 1898, for a scheme to provide dwellings for the poorer classes.

Employers are leased the land and buildings in the schemes for a period of 28 years. If there is no default during the lease term, ownership will be automatically transferred to the company or employer when the lease term expires.

Despite the lease expiration, the civic body did not transfer the title to Century Textile.

The property, including the land, was valued at Rs 728 crore in 2018, as per Mumbai civic body’s submission.

Century Textiles’ wholly owned real estate unit, Birla Estates, is in the process of developing the 3.6-million-square-foot integrated project, Birla Niyaara, on 14 acres as part of a phased development. This is one of South Mumbai’s largest integrated developments.

The 14-acre site will have 2.5 million square feet of residential space, 1 million square feet of office space, and 100,000 square feet of retail space. The entire project, including the residential component, would be completed by December 2030. Birla Estates recently announced that bookings for this project’s apartments have surpassed Rs 1,000 crore.

Birla Estates is currently building five residential structures in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and the National Capital Region. It intends to launch new projects in each of these markets.