‘Maharashtra housing body's conciliation forum is fully flawed’

Experts say complainants are forced into a trap to approach the conciliation forum. Representation pic

After mid-day prominently highlighted the inordinate delay in the hearings at MahaRERA, Forum for People's Collective Efforts (FPCE) which is the member of Central Advisory Council (CAC)-RERA has sought the intervention of the Union housing ministry in this regard. The mid-day news report dated August 9, exposed the failure to get subsequent hearings if litigants don't heed to the MahaRERA's direction for conciliation in the first hearing.

Excerpts of the letter

Abhay Upadhyay, president of FPCE, in his letter (copy with this paper) has stated: "Not only MahaRERA has without authority constituted a conciliation forum but it is also part of the forum as MahaRERA secretary is its chairperson. The Section 32 of the Act doesn't give any scope to interpret that MahaRERA can either constitute a forum or become part of it. Needless to say that this has been done under influence and for the benefit of the builders which becomes very clear when you see the composition of the conciliation forum of MahaRERA," Upadhyay, stated in his letter.

Mid-day report referred to

Upadhyay's letter stated, "It has been brought to our notice that if a complainant doesn't follow a conciliation order and pursues his complaint with MahaRERA then he is given dates after dates and no hearing takes place for years." mid-day report dated August 9, 2024, ‘Aggrieved flat buyers agonised by Maha delay at MahaRERA' highlighted that in many of cases filed in 2021-2022, complainants have not got a second hearing.

Orders not on portal

"There are no details available of proceedings or the orders passed by the conciliation forum on the website of MahaRERA. The very objective of the Act to bring transparency in the system has gone for a toss as everything under this mechanism is very opaque and secret," stated Upadhyay.

Trapped

Upadhyay further stated, "The whole modus-operandi appears to be that complainants are forced into a trap to approach the conciliation forum. Under the present practice, the complainant will have to again approach MahaRERA to enforce the order passed by the conciliation forum rather than allowing the complainant to file a fresh complaint before MahaRERA with his full rights and entitlements as provided to the allottee under the Act."

Lok Adalat is better option

Upadhyay has also highlighted four points of recommendation, which include:
. The ministry should issue guidelines to states after due consultations with all stakeholders for constitution and working of a conciliation forum. It is important to ensure that the conciliation forum so constituted is independent, uniform and comprises impartial persons of repute on the basis of selection criteria. It must be ensured that RERA authorities are not directly or indirectly part of such a conciliation forum to avoid conflict of interest. However, if Lok Adalats are functional in any state then it should be encouraged in place of conciliation forum since it is a better alternative to conciliation forum as the order passed by the Lok Adalats have much more legal validity and credibility.

. In view of the serious allegations against the conciliation forum of MahaRERA, it is our humble request that the ministry should investigate the constitution, functioning and orders of the conciliation forum to determine whether their conduct and their whole ecosystem favours builders.

. The ministry should ask all state RERA authorities to keep the functioning of the conciliation forum suspended till detailed guidelines from the ministry are issued.

. Lastly, notification should be issued from your Ministry to all states barring all chairmans, members and secretaries of State RERA Authorities from joining any real estate firms or their associations/organisations in any capacity whether directly or indirectly for five years from the date of their retirement from the RERA Authority.

Pendency worrisome

Ramesh Prabhu, founder Chairman of MahaSEWA said, "MahaRERA faces multifold challenges today - the litigants have to wait for two to three years for date of hearing instead of sixty days as per the Act, secondly even if the hearing is completed, it takes nearly four to six months, for the order to get uploaded and thirdly there is not guarantee that the order passed by MahaRERA will be honoured by the developer, there are cases, where many litigants have won the case in MahaRERA, but their orders are not executed, as it is either pending in appeal or pending before the revenue department."

"If this continues, the litigants will soon lose their trust on MahaRERA, the developers are otherwise also taking MahaRERA orders lightly and this would derail the entire purpose of introducing RERA to deliver speedy justice and bring transparency, in the real estate sector," said Prabhu.

Delayed justice

"The state government should directly intervene and see why this quasi-judicial body (MahaRERA), in the Urbs Prima in Indis (Prime City of India) is failing to deliver justice to the ordinary litigants fighting powerful builder lobbies. Mumbai has the highest number of registered real estate projects in the country. It generates ample revenue for the central and state exchequers by all supporting industries in real estate. Hence the success of Maha RERA is critical to Mumbai, Maharashtra and India," said advocate Anil D'Souza, secretary Bar Association of MahaRERA.

Need of the hour

"It is high time that a supervisory council is appointed with members from the state government, the judiciary, advocates practising at the MahaRERA, consumer body to understand the supervision, administration, regulatory and judicial functions of the MahaRERA and recalibrate the direction in which it's moving," D'Souza said.

Safeguarding consumer

"It is evident that if conciliation is adopted as a mechanism to resolve disputes amicably, the process must be conducted in accordance with the spirit of RERA's provisions and in an impartial manner to safeguard the interests of consumers in the real estate sector. I, therefore, agree with the Central Council's decision to address the existing anomalies in the conciliation process," said Advocate Godfrey Pimenta, who practices in MahaRERA and is the founder trustee of Watchdog Foundation.

Way out

"It is high time that the state government intervenes to ensure that more members are appointed to handle the pendency of cases before MahaRERA and come out with ways and means, to make MahaRERA more transparent and gain confidence of litigants, by delivering speedy justice within two to three months from date of filing the complaint," Prabhu said.