Mumbai: The Mumbai Grahak Panchayat (MGP), a consumer body, continues to wait to hear from the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) on the homebuyer friendly demands made with regards to deregistration of 88 housing projects across the state.
Last week, MGP demanded that the developers involved in the projects seeking de-registration should be blacklisted for three years, penalised 5% of the project cost and the de-registration list to be published in newspapers for the benefit of the homebuyers who would otherwise miss out on the update as it was only put up on the regulator’s website.
15-Day Deadline For 88 Projects
The MahaRERA has given 15 days of time to those having a stake in these 88 projects to respond to the notice posted on their portal. The regulator put up the notice on June 2 and the deadline to raise an objection ends on Saturday. In the notice available on MahaRERA’s website, it has sought objections and representations from any of the stakeholders who are yet to be paid their dues. Prior to deregistering, the project has to have zero allottees.
“We haven’t heard from MahaRERA on the communication sent to them. There is a legal issue that arises is whether RERA Act provides for such de-registration of projects and the answer is no,” claimed Advocate Shirish Deshpande, Chairman, MGP.
According to him, the February 10, 2023 order issued by MahaRERA allowing the builders to delist the project is inconsistent with the Act and the regulator does not have powers to allow this.
Contents of MGP's Letter to MahaRERA
In MGP’s letter to MahaRERA dated June 5, it has highlighted that, “In the absence of any public notice in the newspapers about so many promoters applying for de-registration, the concerned homebuyers that would be affected by such de-registration will not come to know about such serious development about their projects. Hence our first suggestion is that MahaRERA should give public notice in all Marathi and English newspapers publishing a full list of those projects for which MahaRERA has received applications from the concerned promoters or builders for de-registration of their projects.”
The developers who have sought de-registration of their projects includes Panvelkar Group, Kalpataru Group, Ashwin Sheth Group, Hubtown, Arihant Superstructures, and many more.
Of the 88 projects, 39 are from Pune, 15 from Raigad, 8 in Thane, 4 in Mumbai city, 3 each in Sindhudurg and Palghar, 2 each in Mumbai suburbs, Nashik, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Satara and 1 each in Kolhapur, Nanded, Latur, Ratnagiri and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.
The reasons to get the projects deregistered include unviable projects coming to a standstill, lack of funds, changes in government regulations, exiting the project, internal disputes, etc. The permission to realtors to delist was granted by MahaRERA in February. The regulatory body has laid out certain conditions for realtors to scrap their projects. One such most important clause is that the project should have zero allottees or homebuyers. De-registration will be entertained only if all the rights and claims of buyers are settled.
A MahaRERA official did not respond to this newspaper's query if they had accepted or rejected the demands made by MGP.
