Ashiyan City fails to hand over plots due to legal proceedings, developer clarifies

Real estate company Ashiyan Lands Development Limited has clarified that it failed to hand over sold plots at its "Ashiyan City" project at Khilkhet in the capital to the owners in time due mainly to legal proceedings – a court stay order on the project development, and subsequent bank accounts freeze.

Md Nazrul Islam Bhuiyan, chairman of the company, made the statement in a letter to The Business Standard on Tuesday, referring to the news item titled "Ashiyan city: Dreams gone, so is money" published in TBS on 2 December 2020.

"It would be possible to hand over the plots to the owners if the court allows continuing development work," the letter reads.

Nazrul said the development work remained stopped for a decade.

The letter said Ashiyan group under its subsidiary Ashiyan Lands Development Limited developed a number of real estate projects.

"Ashiyan City was initiated after obtaining all the necessary approvals from the government."

In 2012, the Bangladesh Environment Lawyers Association (BELA) along with several other NGOs filed a writ petition with the High Court, seeking a ban on the activities of Ashiyan City.

In 2016, in a review petition the High Court delivered the verdict in favour of the Ashiyan City, according to the letter.

"Thereafter, in the year of 2017, BELA appealed before Hon'ble Appellate Division and the Hon'ble court stayed all activities of Ashiyan City Project till disposal of the appeal, which is yet to be heard."

Meanwhile, all the bank accounts belonging to the Ashiyan City project were kept frozen. "As a result, we could not continue development works or return money to the buyers," Nazrul said.

"A few clients who booked plots in our project filed cases against us but no court convicted us."

He also claimed that there is no more case pending at Khilkhet police station.