Anyone with a grievance against a realtor can approach RERA bench and their complaint will be taken up. As per the Chairman of Haryana RERA’s Gurugram bench, the RERA law applies to all the projects irrespective of the date of completion.
In a significant move, KK Khandelwal told TOI that RERA can be adjudicated in any dispute between a seller and a buyer in a real estate project, even if that project has received a completion certificate before the law came into effect on May 1, 2017.
It is noteworthy here that states have enacted and notified their own RERA rules. In Haryana, buyers reportedly complained that the developers were being let go as the RERA rules mentioned that those projects which had received completion certificates before May 1, 2017, would not come under the purview.
However, Khandelwal’s interpretation comes a ray of hope for various buyers. It so happened that a buyer, Sanju Jain, filed a case against TDI Infrastructure for not fulfilling its sale agreement obligations under Haryana Rera’s other bench in Panchkula.
The developer argued since the project was completed before RERA came into effect, it did not come under its purview. However, the Panchkula bench cited Section 11 of RERA to declare that a project’s promoter has to fulfill all sales agreement obligations, and nowhere it is mentioned in the RERA rules that only promoters of projects registered under RERA need to comply.
Khandelwal reportedly said during the hearing that a close reading of the central Rera would show that it does not specify that the law is applied to registered projects only. He also declared that Haryana RERA has been receiving and entertaining complaints from home buyers against the developers of completed projects for not meeting all the obligations mentioned in the sales agreement.