For up to eight years, residents across seven 19-floor towers have been denied a permanent grid electricity connection from TANGEDCO. Instead, they live at the mercy of erratic diesel generators, experiencing severe daily power blackouts lasting anywhere from 5 to 12 hours.

The South Chennai Housing Boom: A Mirage of Modern Living?

Over the past decade, South Chennai’s suburban landscape—stretching across Perumbakkam, Jalladianpettai, Medavakkam, and Sholinganallur—has witnessed a massive, rapid residential explosion. Driven by proximity to the massive Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) tech corridor, affordable mid-luxury pricing, and an influx of top-tier schools, thousands of families working in the IT, healthcare, and corporate sectors have eagerly migrated into these sprawling gated communities.

However, a harsh reality has emerged across this residential belt: a high-rise township is only as good as its underlying civic backbone. True, liveable community development requires far more than just erecting concrete towers. To function safely, large-scale projects demand heavy-duty electricity grids, independent water treatment, efficient underground sewage networks, advanced fire-safety systems, round-the-clock lift upkeep, proper stormwater drainage, and a structured, legally compliant handover to the Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA). Without these core pillars, even the most premium township risks becoming an expensive logistical trap for its buyers.

The Human Cost: Staircase Rescues and Terrified Families

The lack of a permanent power grid has turned daily life into a serious safety hazard. During a recent generator breakdown, a resident on the 18th floor suffered a medical crisis; neighbors had to carry them down 18 flights of stairs by hand because the elevators were dead.

Furthermore, frequent generator overloads regularly trap children in pitch-black, unventilated lift cars for up to 15 minutes, leaving them traumatized. This constant utility failure has effectively imprisoned the community’s most vulnerable—including the elderly, surgical patients, and pregnant women—who cannot physically brave the grueling climb to the upper floors.

Trapped by Debt: The EMI Prison

Despite these unlivable conditions, moving out is financially impossible for most families. Homeowners are completely locked into the complex because they are paying massive monthly EMIs on home loans for flats worth up to ₹1.15 crores. They cannot afford to rent a second apartment elsewhere while continuing to pay off a mortgage on a home they can barely live in, leaving them trapped by their own investments.

Simultaneously, they are forced to pay hyper-inflated maintenance fees just to keep the industrial diesel generators fueled. This has completely destroyed rental yields, as IT professionals avoid the complex, forcing landlords to run a net monthly deficit.

Furthermore, properties inside the grid-deprived towers have entered a “resale dead-zone” with zero liquidity, trapping the residents’ life savings. On an operational level, continuous voltage surges from the heavy generators constantly fry household appliances and prematurely degrade core community systems like main water pumps and elevator motors, setting the stage for massive out-of-pocket replacement costs down the line.

The Amenities Mirage: Premium Pricing for Empty Shells

Buyers were promised a luxury lifestyle complete with a central clubhouse, a swimming pool, a fully equipped gym, and an integrated water treatment plant. Instead, these facilities remain unfinished concrete shells, locked away, or completely un-powered.

Because the entire township relies on temporary generators, turning on heavy loads like clubhouse air conditioning or sports lighting would instantly trigger a total blackout, leaving the luxury amenities residents paid for as nothing more than a marketing illusion.

The Root Cause: The Substation Dispute & Legal Hurdle

Why has it taken nearly a decade to secure basic electricity? The roadblock boils down to a mix of land disputes, missing certificates, and procedural legal errors.

The Substation Land Dispute

For a high-rise complex of this massive scale, TANGEDCO regulations dictate that the developer must formally hand over an acre of land to construct a dedicated 110KVA power substation. The builder originally allocated a plot under a previous state government administration, but the entire process stalled due to structural issues and disputes surrounding the land’s official survey numbers.

Missing Completion Certificates (CC)

Under Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) building laws, permanent utility lines are strictly authorized only after a formal Completion Certificate (CC) is cleared. Currently, five of the affected towers completely lack a CC, while two hold only partial documentation.

The Dismissed Writ Petition

The frustration eventually moved to the judiciary, but met a swift end. In June 2024, the Madras High Court (WP.No.15321 of 2024, M/s. Greens Apartment Owners Welfare Association v. The Chairman and Managing Director, TANGEDCO) dismissed the residents’ writ petition on purely procedural grounds.

The court record explicitly noted that the residents’ association had failed to submit a valid application for a permanent connection themselves, while the developer had failed to submit their documentation in the required proper format because the mandatory substation land gift deed remained unresolved.

The Phase-Wise Disconnect: The Builder’s Stance

When questioned about the unfolding crisis, Prakasam Jagan, CEO of Ozone Group, shifted the focus to the scale of the township’s development. According to the developer, the massive project was split into two separate phases of 12 towers each.

Jagan clarified that grid power isn’t completely absent from the complex; permanent TANGEDCO connections have already been successfully routed to all 12 towers in Phase 1, as well as 5 towers in Phase 2. The current bottleneck is isolated to the remaining 7 towers of Phase 2, where the company claims it is actively processing the infrastructure paperwork required to finally hook them up to the primary electricity grid.

Regarding the substation, he noted that they have identified another acre of land and the gift deed will be executed immediately to transfer the land to the electricity department, promising that a permanent power connection will materialize within three months.

While a senior TANGEDCO official confirmed that an inquiry has been launched to evaluate immediate, short-term interim relief solutions for the families, the residents of Ozone Greens remain cautious. For now, they continue to monitor the calendar, waiting to see if this latest timeline will finally end their eight-year power struggle.

The Regulatory Stance: TNRERA Demands Full Accountability

The Tamil Nadu Real Estate Regulatory Authority (TNRERA) has maintained strict pressure on the developer entity, Selene Estate Limited, with the ongoing infrastructure failures at Ozone Greens appearing continuously on active compliance and final-order listings into 2026.

Siding firmly with homebuyers, TNRERA’s baseline position states that handing over apartment keys without functional, legally cleared primary utilities constitutes an “incomplete delivery” and a direct breach of builder-buyer agreements.

By tracking the developer’s failure to execute the mandatory substation land gift deed, TNRERA has continuously categorized the 7 affected towers as a breach of the original builder-buyer agreement terms filed during their 2017 registrations (TN/01/Building/0023/2017 & 0027/2017).

A significant formal proceeding was logged as recently as March 4, 2026, directly addressing unresolved homebuyer complaints regarding construction handovers and missing basic infrastructure at the Perumbakkam site.

Buyer Beware: The Real Estate Checklist

The ongoing crisis at Ozone Greens serves as a vital reminder for modern homebuyers. When buying a high-rise, possession does not equal liveability.

• Audit the Grid Status: Never rely on “24/7 generator backup” as a long-term primary utility. It inflates your maintenance costs and damages infrastructure.
• Check the Substation Gift Deed: Verify that the builder has legally transferred the required land package to TANGEDCO before moving in.
• Demand Final Completion Certificates: Avoid accepting handovers based on “partial CCs,” which leaves structural, legal, and grid access completely up in the air.

Avoiding the Trap: The Role of Independent Liveability Audits

To prevent these high-rise infrastructure nightmares, modern property buyers are moving past superficial walkthroughs and utilizing specialized diagnostic services like Verified Real Estate property communities and local liveability audits.

Instead of relying on a builder’s sales pitch, independent audit teams perform comprehensive background checks on a project’s fundamental civic layers. They physically inspect the structural health of utility setups, verify the processing status of TANGEDCO substations, check the validity of CMDA Completion Certificates, and map the actual operational capacity of water and sewage networks.

By revealing hidden legal bottlenecks and engineering shortcuts before keys are handed over, these pre-purchase data evaluations ensure that homebuyers invest in a fully functional, liveable community rather than an expensive, asset-locked operational struggle.