Concerned over the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) issuing about 16,000 notices to builders after six years of coming into existence, homebuyers’ body, Forum for People’s Collective Efforts (FPCE), has said that this cannot be ‘just a casual slip’, as it has forced homebuyers to take a decision based on the ‘half-baked’ information made available by the builders on the regulator’s website.
The homebuyers should be compensated for this mix-up, FPCE added.
As per Sec 11 of the RERA Act 2016, builders are expected to update details of their RERA-registered projects on RERA’s website every three months. In January this year, MahaRERA had issued show cause notices to over 19,000 project promoters who had not updated information on the RERA website. But more than 16,000 of them either did not respond to the notices or submit satisfactory responses.
“Homebuyers are the biggest sufferers as they have been supplied with half-baked information from the website. Both existing and potential homebuyers have based their decision-making process on the basis of the information available on the website which deliberately has not been updated by the builders in order to hide material information from such homebuyers, which if available may have altered their decision, and therefore they have suffered irreparable damage,” the homebuyers’ body said.
“That bringing transparency into the real estate sector, which has been one of the prime objectives of the Act, has been thrown out of the window since hiding and non-disclosure of material information have been made the new normal by the Regulator,” it said.
Stating that this is a very serious and deliberate violation of the provisions of the Act, buyers have demanded that they should be ‘reasonably compensated’ by MahaRERA since they cannot escape responsibility for their failure in discharging their duties as expected under the law.
They have demanded that promoters of all such projects be penalised under Section 61 of the Act. “That accountability be fixed and action taken against everyone responsible for such gross failure to ensure that such brazen violations are never allowed by regulators in the future,” the homebuyers’ body said.
“Now in 2023, after more than six years since MahaRERA came into existence, they (MahaRERA), as part of enabling a close monitoring system, have started reviewing the projects registered with them since inception, i.e., since 2017,” FPCE said.
Initially in January 2023, MahaRERA issued 19,500 notices to various real estate developers, including projects registered in 2017, for not updating their project details. And now, again they have issued 16,000 notices, which implies that around 3,500 notices have since been complied with, it said.
This clearly establishes the fact that the real estate developers were not fulfilling their obligation of updating their project details on the website of MahaRERA every quarter post registration of projects, as mandated under Section 11 of RERA.
“This violation is not just once, but was repeated and continuous since inception of RERA. Such violation by so many promoters for so long is only possible when they had the confidence and belief that the Regulator will turn a blind eye and will not act against them. The point to note here is that, this is exactly what happened and it cannot be sheer luck or co-incidence,” the homebuyers’ body said.
“However, here we are seeing that the Regulator allowed the law to be violated by the builders continuously and repeatedly since 2017 with impunity. It is hard to believe that ignoring and overlooking the violation by so many promoters for so long was just a casual slip,” FPCE said.
It noted that it will be practically impossible to properly scrutinise the replies received from 16,000 notices due to multiple uploading of information. So, despite repeated violation, the Authority may think that their notice has been complied with.
“This is a very serious violation by the builders which has been conveniently overlooked by the Regulators. Homebuyers are again the biggest sufferers as they relied on the information on the website for their decision-making. The information was not updated for which they should be reasonably compensated. It should be ensured that such brazen violations are not allowed in future and the Regulators stick to the responsibilities assigned to them under the Act,” said Abhay Upadhyay, president of FPCE.
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