Madras High Court halts a judge’s order to update the guideline value

A Madras High Court division bench has delayed an order by a single judge that set aside the modification of property guidelines’ valuations.

The state government’s appeal was granted an interim stay by the bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and K Rajasekar.

The court postponed the issue for four weeks, giving the respondents—including the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI)—four weeks to submit a reply to the appeal.

The appeal was filed against Justice P. Velmurugan’s order, which set aside the Inspector General (IG) of Registration’s March 30, 2023 circular. The IG found that the government had not revised the guideline values in accordance with the statutory provisions.

The judge stated that although the statutory provisions were adhered to when updating the guideline values in 2017 based on the subcommittee’s report, certain procedures were not followed, such as getting the subcommittee’s or experts’ report, having the evaluation committee fix the value, and asking for public objections.