JOIN USHome buyers livid as infoobscured from RERA site
The Real Estate Regulatory Authority, Karnataka (K-RERA) has been at the receiving end of anger from home buyers over lack of transparency. The issue cropped up after vital information such as records of all registered real estate projects and proposed projects went missing.
The effort has been led by the Forum for People’s Collective Efforts, an organisation that works to protect home buyers by raising several issues concerning them. The organization has been involved in tracking the functioning of K-RERA authorities since its inception. One of its main efforts has been towards making K-RERA website more transparent by providing details and data as per the provisions of RERA Act.
M S Shankar, general secretary, says that K-RERA has suppressed important information on their website by grouping it under a new tab called ‘Services’. The information was earlier easily accessible to the public.
Now, people are required to get a complaint number to access judgements and a project registration to find out about project status. The ‘Project status’ tab allowed people to find out about applications that were under process, approved, rejected, revoked or even renewed.
Details of K-REAT (Karnataka RERA Appellant Tribunal) has also disappeared.
“The preamble of the RERA Act emphasises transparency and accountability by establishing symmetry of information between the promoter and purchase,” says Shankar.
This information is essential to the buyers as it could help them make a comparative and informed decision when buying property.
“K-RERA Rule 15 and RERA Act Section 11(1) and (2) is not being enforced by not incorporating these contents on the website. The rules ask for utmost transparency on the project status, update, sanctioned plan, details of amenities, facilities that will come up with the project along with its specifications, commencement certificate,” he says.
Every quarter, they are also required to update details of development works (internal and external) along with photographs, number of units and garages booked, number of RERA complaints, appeal, litigation, etc.
Tracking of this information would also help the RERA authorities to intervene in time should there be a lapse from the developers’ end, before the situation escalates into litigation.
This also helps interested parties to avoid the current practice of paying up to Rs 5 lakh to developers in the name of ‘Booking application’, to get project documents to seek legal opinion before investing.
Since there is no formal agreement, this amount is not returned, should a buyer decide otherwise.