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On Friday, the Administrative Court ruled to withdraw the permit for the 6.5-billion-baht Ashton Asoke condominium project, a swanky 50-storey high-rise residential building -- saying the project violated the Building Control Act as it does not have an exit onto Asoke Road.
Construction had wrapped up and 80% of its rooms had already been sold, but the court ultimately decided that the project's exit onto Asoke Road is actually located on an adjacent plot of land owned by the Mass Rapid Transit Authority -- which the developer claimed to have legally leased.
The problem actually began a few years ago, when several residents living on Soi Sukhumvit 19, led by the president of the Stop Global Warming Association, asked the court to look into the project's approval process. The plaintiffs named in the lawsuit several people who were in charge of the project's permits, including the director of Wattana district, the director of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's (BMA) Department of Civil Works, Bangkok governor Aswin Kwanmuang, the governor of Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand (MRTA), as well as the committee that approved the project's environmental impact assessment.