MahaRERA slaps developer with penalty

What existed just as a burden initially, will now make the real estate developers suffer for as long as they neglect the registrations for ongoing projects in Maharashtra. The RERA Authority of the state, MahaRERA, in what is seen as the first of its kind, has penalized 480 housing projects for registering with the governing body after the deadline, that was 31^st July. It was announced on Wednesday that the projects which registered with MahaRERA after the aforementioned date, will be liable to pay a heavy sum of Rs 50,000 each.

This had been long expected by the real estate industry of the state as the Maharashtra RERA Authority made it clear in the past that there will be no extensions to the Central’s deadline and those at fault will face stern consequences.

MahaRERA secretary, Vasant Prabhu, also informed that there will be a separate fine on projects registering on and after 3^rd August 2017. This will be announced later following the meeting of the authorized body. The penalty on such projects is expected to be much more burdensome and will affect the builders heavily.

However, few other state Authorities have been lenient on the builders, but, mainly due to the delays in notification of the rules. The UP government has extended the deadline to 15^th August and will start to levy penalties following the same. The Karnataka and other RERA Authorities of states have not yet made a conclusion on any kind of charges for delays in registration in respective states. The main factor accounting for the flexibility of these authorities can be the low participation of developers to get on board with the Central’s Act. Most of the registrations have been the result of a last-minute rush and only a few builders had registered with RERA in the initial phase. Whereas, the Maharashtra Authority was one of the firsts to notify the rules at the earliest and also launched the portal for registration since the start of May, which gave the builders a handful amount of time to get their projects registered. This on the other hand also justifies their severe actions against the defaulters.

The Maharashtra RERA authority has also been assigned the additional duty to look over the status of registrations in Dadar and Nagar Haveli, as well as the Daman and Diu due to the absence of proper Authorities in these territories.

Under the RERA Act, it has been mentioned that developers can be fined or even imprisoned if the builder concerned does not comply with the orders. Now, with the deadline for registrations of projects past due, and MahaRERA keeping their words of punishing the defaulters, the only thing clear seems that the builders who have not yet registered needs to carry out the procedures as soon as possible to escape with the smallest amount of penalties.        

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