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Builders Not Registering By September 1 To Face Strict Penalties: Maharashtra RERA Chief

MahaRERA to take strict action against developers who fail to register.

Residential and commercial buildings are seen from a show home at Lodha Altamount, a luxury residential project developed by Lodha Developers Ltd., in Mumbai, India  Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg  
Residential and commercial buildings are seen from a show home at Lodha Altamount, a luxury residential project developed by Lodha Developers Ltd., in Mumbai, India Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg  

The Maharashtra Real Estate Regulation Act chairman Gautam Chatterjee has started imposing penalty on developers seeking registration of projects after the July 31 deadline.

For projects that applied for registration after the deadline, MahaRERA has already slapped a fine of Rs 50,000 for the first two days of August. From August 3 until August 16, the regulator would fine Rs 1 lakh or the registration fee, whichever is higher.

Chatterjee said the regulator would review each delay and decide the quantum of punishment after that. Penalties will be stricter for the projects that file for registration after September 1, he said.

Maharashtra was the first state to implement RERA on May 1, the day the central Act became applicable across the country. Builders had time till July 31 to seek registration under the new law that seeks to protect homebuyers from mis-selling and delays.

The regulator has so far received 12,700 applications for registrations. Of these, about 8,000 have been approved and the rest would be cleared in the next seven-ten days, he said. Only 500 applications pertain to new launches while the rest are for ongoing projects.

The number of applications shot up to 10,000 in the last three days of July. The regulator received 1,500 applications in August so far. Of these, about 6,000 came from Mumbai and Thane region and the rest from Pune.

People can register their complaints on the online portal of MahaRERA. So far, it has received about 30 complaints, mostly pertaining to delays, Chatterjee said.