industry

Supreme Court’s RERA jurisdiction verdict may compel states to amend rules


The Supreme Court’s verdict, upholding the jurisdiction of the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016 on all realty projects that were ongoing and had not received Completion Certificate until the law came into effect, is now expected to trigger a major change in state-specific rules modelled on this Act.

On Thursday, the apex court affirmed the purview of the RERA Act on all projects that were incomplete and had not received completion certificate until the commencement of the Act.

Regulations of RERA authorities in states including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu are currently not in line with this position and may need to amend their rules to ensure all ongoing projects get covered under RERA.

In 2017, M Venkaiah Naidu, then Union Housing Minister had raised concern over dilution of RERA provisions by various states and had also told state authorities that they have no power to do so and this will have serious implications including public outcry.

On the ambiguity about ongoing projects and RERA’s jurisdiction, the ministry had already clarified that all the ongoing projects that have not received completion certificates till May 1, 2017 would come under the purview of the real estate Act.

“This ruling has reaffirmed the jurisdiction of RERA on all real estate projects that were ongoing at the time of the law getting enacted. We have been following up on these dilutions and changes in definitions of ongoing projects by states. With this judgment, states will be compelled to amend their rules to be in line with RERA provisions,” said Abhay Upadhyay, president, homebuyers’ body the Forum for People’s Collective Efforts (FPCE).

He expects the state regulatory authorities to move swiftly to identify projects that have enjoyed the exemption under the garb of these diluted rules and initiate necessary action against them.

In 2017, taking its battle against dilution of RERA, FPCE or erstwhile Fight For RERA had sought intervention of Committee on Subordinate Legislation or COSL of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to ensure that the final RERA rules were framed and implemented by states within the ambit of the law.

After the RERA Act was notified on May 1, 2016, all the states were required to notify final rules within six months. However, most states, according to FPCE, had diluted the rules in favour of developers and therefore it had urged the COSL’s intervention. The body had already written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then Union Minister for Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu and also to the Chief Ministers of UP and Gujarat.

Several state RERA authorities had tweaked their rules to exclude even ongoing projects that had not received completion certificates by introducing additional conditions.

For instance, Telangana had excluded the ongoing projects, for which building permissions were received prior to January 2017, from RERA jurisdiction, effectively keeping all ongoing projects out of RERA.

In Uttar Pradesh too, the authority has excluded ongoing projects with just application for completion certificate. Most states have either tweaked or introduced conditions to exclude ongoing projects from RERA’s purview on similar or other grounds.

In addition to dilution in jurisdiction of RERA, homebuyers have also been highlighting dilution of rules, including terms and the fines payable for compounding of offences by developers, the proposed layout plans and floor space index (FSI) consumption proposed in the project.



READ SOURCE

Leave a Reply

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.