Bombay High Court (File photo)MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court has passed a remark, while dismissing builders’ plea against the constitutional validity of RERA, that Maharashtra’s RERA rules need to be changed after taking “a fresh survey of the rules. The remark was made with reference to Section 6(a) of the Maharashtra Rules 2017 that refers to grant or rejection of registration of the project. The current rules allow a builder to exclude the time consumed due to court case or such mitigating circumstances from construction timeline.

This would essentially mean that builders will not be able to cite the excuse of some pending cases for non-compliance with the committed project delivery deadline.

Last week, the Bombay High Court upheld the constitutional validity of the recently enacted Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016, after several builders had challenged the legal validity of the act and its various provisions.

While the court dismissed these builders’ petitions, it allowed two pleas by them. The court allowed the RERA authority to grant extension of time for project completion to developers in exceptional circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

However, it also passed the above mentioned remark with regards to developers’ failure to complete projects in committed timeframe.

According to AbhayUpadhyay, president, Forum For People’s Collective Efforts (FPCE), that represented homebuyers, the Maharashtra RERA rules are not in sync with the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016 and FPCE has earlier written to the chief minister of Maharashtra about it.

“Provisions in the rules with regard to 70% deposit of only future collections, exclusion of time consumed due to court cases and other mitigating circumstances from the timeline for completion of projects and its extension, breaking of a project into piecemeal considering few floors of a project as a separate phase of a project, interchangeable use of occupation and completion certificates are all grave dilution in favour of builders,” Upadhyay said.

He is of view that the Bombay High Court’s remark has vindicated homebuyers’ stand and hopes that the state government of Maharashtra will reconsider and frame its rules in line with Central Rules which has been held as benchmark.

Maharashtra was one of the first states to notify rules and establish the MahaRERA after all sections of the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016, came into force on May 1. According to RERA rules, the delivery date mentioned while registering the project with the authority will be binding and any deviation will attract penal action.

Many residential projects, while registering with the regulator, have extended their delivery timelines to avoid such action.

Source: ET Bureau