Regulating A Wayward Industry – Real Estate

Ayear after the Real Estate Regulation and DevelopmentAct, 2016 (RERA) came into effect, 20 out of the 28 states (the Act is not applicable in J & K) have implemented the rules or framed their own laws to carry out the mandate.

- Nikhil Raghavan

Satvik Varma, a litigation counsel and corporate attorney based in New Delhi, in his article titled ‘The RERA Report Card’, published in The Hindu on May 26, 2018, writes, “In some states such as Uttar Pradesh, the Act’s provisions have been watered down in favour of builders by altering the definition of ‘ongoing projects' which need registration under RERA. There is also a dilution on the penalties for non-compliance.”

Similarly, the speedy dispute redress mechanism envisaged by the Act is yet to take shape. Apart from Maharashtra, only Punjab and Madhya Pradesh have appointed a permanent regulatory authority (to be established within a period of a year). To ease the transition, RERA allows state governments to designate an existing body as the regulatory authority until a permanent one is established. This has resulted in 13 states working with only a designated regulatory authority. West Bengal is yet to even designate a regulatory authority.

The report states, “Additionally, only six states have set up the online portal contemplated by the Act. In the north-eastern states, RERA has been challenged on certain constitutional grounds of land belonging to the community and autonomous councils.”

The real estate industry in our country, especially those in the residential sector, were largely unregulated and unorganised, thereby, not having a control over delays, quality of construction, etc. The implementation of the RERA was to bring in a qualitative change in the way the industry operated and was aimed at safeguarding the individual buyer by being efficient, transparent, and accountable.