Telangana RERA Authority within three months
Following a representation last week and a meeting with a delegation of concerned citizens on the issue on Monday, the Telangana Municipal Administration & Urban Development Department has assured that the permanent Telangana RERA Authority will be set up within three months.
Further, the government has also agreed to the constitution of a RERA Advisory Committee with the participation of Civil Society representatives, industry, the law fraternity and others, a press release from the Forum for Peoples’ Collective Efforts (FPCE), and the “Fight For RERA” movement said after a meeting with Mr. Arvind Kumar, IAS Principal Secretary, Telangana State Municipal Administration & Urban Development today.
The FPCE had demanded last week that the government immediately accede to its demands for the setting up of a permanent RERA Authority and the TS RERA website apart from the immediate repeal of the Telangana State RERA rules which it maintained were not in consonance with the Central Act and kept ongoing projects out of their purview and leaving lakhs of potential and aggrieved homeowners in the lurch.
While, the Principal Secretary assured the delegation on the first two points in the affirmative, on the third demand that the RERA rules be recast in line with the Central Rules, the senior official said the issue would have to be discussed and a decision taken at the appropriate level of the government.
In its representation on the matter, the FPCE had cited the 6 December 2017 final judgement of the High Court of Bombay which upheld the constitutional validity of RERA and specifically clarified that all “On-going projects” are covered under the ambit of RERA and hence upheld the provisions under Section 3 of the Act in its totality. Therefore, “there is no scope for any state, including Telangana, to tinker with the provisions of Ongoing Projects via their individual state rules...”.
The FPCE and the “Fight for RERA” are a pan-India movements instrumental in getting the Real Estate Bill passed in 2016 by impleading in the various cases before the High Court of Bombay.
Significantly, the Telangana Government had dispatched a team of officials to Maharashtra and Karnataka to study the efforts by the respective states in implementing the RERA. Impressed by the exercise in Maharashtra, the Telangana Government has now decided to adopt the model including the framework for its people facing website which is critical for executing the charter of the MahaRERA that includes ensuring Disclosures of Real Estate Projects by Promoters, Real Estate Projects Registration, Real Estate Agents Registration and Complaints Redressal.
Taking cognizance of other suggestions, Shri Arvind Kumar directed his department officials to immediately issue instruction for mandatory TS RERA Registration to each builder and developer along with each housing project approval plan from now on by all Town Planning authorities in Telangana State.
The state government has also assured it would engage RWAs and homebuyers for better implementation of TS RERA, the FPCE release stated.
This is in line with what many other states, particularly Maharashtra, have put in place. For instance, under MahaRERA has established the MahaRERA Conciliation and Dispute Resolution Forum with 33 conciliators representing the realty sector, consumer’s forums and homebuyers. Under the mechanism of the Forum, if the parties don’t reach a consensus, the allottee(s) can lodge a formal complaint against the builder via MahaRERA Complaints Portal to be taken up by the Forum.
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