Mukesh Ambani's $2 billion home is world's most expensive private property, says Forbes

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The entire building will have nine elevators and 600 servants will be employed to make sure that everything is in order.

However, Antilla is not free from problems. The Maharashtra State Waqf Board has accused the Ambanis of deceitfully acquiring the 4532 square meter of land from them, the same piece of plot on which the Antilla is coming up.

The Waqf Board has told the Supreme Court that the plot in dispute was given to Maharashtra State Waqf Board in 1957 by Jivaji Raje Scindia and was being used by a trust, set up by social activist and philanthropist Currimbhoy Ebrahim Khoja, to look after destitutes and orphans belonging to the Khoja Mohammedan community.

After the Waqf Act was legislated, the properties belonging to the orphanage as well as other similar ones came to be treated as Waqf properties, which can be sold only with its permission, the Waqf Board contended.

The Matunga-based Currimbhoy Ebrahim Khoja Orphanage, however, sold the land to Antilia Commercial Private Ltd, a company floated by the Ambani family in May 2002 without the Waqf Board's permission for Rs.21 crore ($5.25 million), much below its estimated market value of Rs.400 crore ($100 million).

The sale deed also stipulated that Antilla would be using the land only for "pious, religious and charitable purposes" as desired by Ebrahim Khoja, a condition which was later even waived off by the orphanage trustees in connivance with an erstwhile Waqf Board chairman who wrongly accepted Rs.16 lakhs ($40,000) from the Ambanis to settle the deal and waive off objections to it.

However, on May 2, the Supreme Court granted temporary relief to the Ambanis by announcing that it would not intervene in the construction of the building on Waqf Board land in Mumbai and has directed the matter back to the Bombay High Court. Earlier, the Bombay High Court had stayed the Waqf Board proceedings.

Meanwhile, many people have criticized Ambani for opulent display of his wealth in a city which also shelters the biggest slum in Asia, Dharavi, which houses about 600,000 people in ramshackle buildings.

According to Praful Bidwai, a newspaper columnist, the divide between rich and poor was becoming acute and with "Mr. Ambani...building an edifice" to reflect his own ego, the "tide of anger about such absurd spending" would only keep growing.

"It will not go down well with the public," he warned.

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