A meeting of the district committee with the District Collector as the convener held here on Thursday set August 31 as the revised deadline for apartment owners in towers B and C of Chander Kunj Army apartments to vacate their apartments ahead of the proposed demolition.

Earlier, the plan was to evacuate the families by July 31. This was the first meeting of the committee after a single bench of the Kerala High Court disposed of a bunch of review petitions against its February 3 verdict ordering the demolition and reconstruction of the twin towers comprising 208 apartments on security grounds.

The tender formalities for the demolition will also be initiated next month. The meeting also asked the Army Welfare Housing Organisation (AWHO), the builders of the apartments, to initiate steps to file the statutory applications for the reconstruction of the apartments. A meeting will also be held with the Secretary of the Local Self-Government department in this regard before the next meeting of the committee.

While the representatives of apartment owners demanded compensation for the investments that they had made for decking up their apartment interiors, the committee rejected it since the High Court order had no mention about it. They also demanded that all the 208 owners be made eligible for rent during the course of the demolition and reconstruction.

The court had increased the rent to be paid to the owners by the AWHO till the handing over of the new units from ₹21,000 and ₹23,000 proposed in the February 3 verdict to ₹30,000 and ₹35,000 to the owners of flats in B and C towers. The court, though, had excluded owners “who had not commenced residence and those who had their flats rented out” since the delivery.

“Even such owners have been paying the monthly maintenance charges, and hence discriminating against them amounted to creating divisions within the owners, which would be problematic as all of us would have to live together when the reconstruction is completed. Also, many of them would be paying EMIs on the investments in their apartments,” said an owner.

The committee also decided to stick with the schedule already drawn up for the demolition and reconstruction. Even before the court disposed of the review petitions, the district committee had set November 9, 2025 as the tentative date for the demolition of the twin towers and October 31, 2029 for handing over the newly built apartments. This was part of the elaborate four-phase plan that the committee had drawn up.