Noida: Residents who withheld four months’ maintenance fee over alleged poor upkeep at Ajnara Homes were left scrambling for food and essentials on Sunday after the builder’s maintenance agency allegedly barred delivery agents and domestic help from entering the condominium in Greater Noida West.The move triggered a fresh confrontation at the 15-tower complex, which is home to 2,600 flats and around 10,000 residents. Flat owners said they had little choice but to withhold the fee because complaints about falling plaster, malfunctioning lifts and unhygienic basements had gone unresolved. They said they would resume payments only if amenities were made available.Some residents staged a protest at the society’s main gate after the services were stopped.On Oct 10, TOI reported that residents had been trapped in malfunctioning lifts on three occasions in a week. Repeated calls and messages to the agency seeking a comment went unanswered on Sunday.Omkar Nirala, a resident of Tower C, said his order for milk and bread was stopped at the gate on Sunday morning. “I had to walk around 800 metres from my tower to the gate to collect my delivery. I was waiting for tea, and my family wanted breakfast. But the maintenance staff did not listen to our pleas. They said services were being denied because we had stopped paying maintenance,” he told TOI.Residents said delivery personnel from Amazon, Blinkit and Flipkart were turned away, forcing people to collect groceries and medicines at the main gate.“How can they expect women and the elderly to walk to the gate for groceries or medicines?” asked Chandan Sinha, president of apartment owners’ association (AOA). He said residents had been demanding a handover of maintenance to the AOA because the agency’s agreement had expired more than four years ago.Dinkar Pandey, another resident, alleged that the agency staff had also stopped garbage collection and turned away guests and service providers. “This has been happening intermittently for nearly a month. Today, it led to a confrontation,” he said.Later in the day, AOA members and residents met the Bisrakh SHO, who assured them he would take up the matter with the builder’s staff.Pandey said the agency had often cited financial constraints to explain the poor upkeep, but residents were not convinced. He also questioned the way residents were being billed, and alleged that sewage treatment plant breakdowns, waste management problems and inadequate security at the society were common.Sunday’s dispute raises fresh questions about the agency’s authority to restrict access over unpaid dues.Section 22 of the UP Apartment Act allows an AOA’s general body to curtail an essential service for unpaid common expenses only after dues have remained unpaid for more than six months. This includes at least seven days’ notice, a general-body resolution, and sending a certified copy to the owner and competent authority. Action can follow only after a month has elapsed and the resolution has been displayed publicly. The law does not specifically mention food deliveries or domestic help.But at Ajnara Homes, residents said dues had been withheld for four months, and the restriction was imposed by the builder’s maintenance agency, not through the AOA.
Several residents of the condo gathered at the society gate to protest stopping of online deliveries by the society maintenance.
