Telangana State-Real Estate Regulation Authority (TS-RERA) is getting ready to finally use its penal powers after months of trying to cajole builders and others related to the real estate industry to register and adhere to the provisions of the RERA Act.
“We have been given permission by our chairman (Special Chief Secretary Rajeshwar Tiwari) to charge penalty of 10% of total project cost on a builder in the city and also file criminal case against a technical consultant for filing false information in the website and cheating several real estate developers in Warangal. It will be for the first time that we will be taking penal action under the RERA Act,” disclosed TS-RERA Secretary K. Vidhyadhar.
The builder is said be constructing a project in Serlingampally area of the capital region at an estimated cost of ₹6.6 crore, therefore he would have to shell out ₹66 lakh. But, first the builder will be issued a showcause notice before any penal amount is recovered, Mr. Vidyadhar hastened to add.
TS-RERA had come into existence in August 2018 where projects in plots of above 500 sq. metres or having more than eight apartments approved on or after January 1, 2017, come under its ambit needing online registration with details. From then on, the Authority has been increasing deadlines from November last year onwards till June-end for real estate developers to enrol with rising penalty fee that has reached ₹3 lakh now.
Mr. Vidhyadhar, also the Director of Town & Country Planning (DTCP), said that over the last few months, several awareness and training programmes have been conducted for real estate developers and their personnel to explain about the registration process and provisions of RERA at different places across the State.
About 5,600 profiles of properties are now available with the TS-RERA with 80% within the capital region of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) and Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) limits. Scrutiny of about 2,600 properties have been done and notices were sent to 450 developers seeking explanations about shortcomings in the details furnished online.
“Problem is most of the builders have delegated the registration work to independent technical consultants and there is no accountability for the mistakes made. We are also planning to come down heavily in some of the consultants as they are not heeding to responding to our queries,” explained the secretary.
Organisations like Telangana Real Estate Developers Association (TREDA) and TS Builders Association have majority of big developers on their rolls and hence are well versed with most RERA provisions. But, getting to make the relatively smaller builders is a task but the Authority is ready to counsel them, he maintained.