Union housing and urban poverty alleviation minister Kumari Selja had said the Centre was working on a model real estate regulation bill to provide guidelines for facilitating growth of the real estate sector, fostering healthy competition and making it more transparent and efficient.
Developers have had different reactions on the issue. On one hand, they felt any change for the better was welcome and on the other, they pointed out some undesirable effects it could entail.
Santosh Rungta, president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (Credai), said, “We welcome the ministry proposing a bill to address the consumers’ concerns, but the solution is not in creating another act. Consumers are not aware that they are being protected. Therefore, we believe imparting knowledge to consumers is critical to safeguard their interests. It will minimise chances of their falling prey to malpractices.”
He added that Credai was concerned about protecting buyers and had introduced a code of conduct that aimed at bringing transparency to transactions between buyers and developers. It also had provisions for consumer dispute mitigation. “Protection to consumers has already been ascertained by various acts and the proposed bill may result in the repetition of operational procedures for a developer, which may lead to a rise in input costs and make a project expensive. A methodical approach should be implemented benefiting the industry as a whole,” he said.
According to Pradeep Sureka, director of South City Projects (Kolkata), “Adding more regulation norms to an already over-regulated sector can retard the development of realty in the country. One must have a single window clearance mechanism to simplify procedures.” He added the realty sector was organised and developers followed strong ethical practices. Malpractices were negligible. “Moreover, there are several acts to protect consumers’ interests,” he said.
Sushil Mohta, managing director of Merlin Group, said it could be a duplication of rules such as the West Bengal Building (Regulation of Promotion of Construction and Transfer by Promoters) Act, 1993, commonly known as the Promoters Act, which was operational for more than 10 years and an addition could give rise to several malpractices. “Bringing in a regulation bill will only be duplication in operational procedures and will be another window of clearances taking more time to start the project, which will be extremely detrimental for the development of the sector. There is corruption at different levels already when it comes to getting sanctions, approvals and clearances. This may be another window for such malpractices,” he said, adding that the real estate sector had undergone a sea change over the years and had become a lot more organised. Unlike before, there was a lot of transparency and 60 per cent of the organised real estate sector comprised private players.
Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman and managing director of Ambuja Realty, said, “Any regulatory mechanism to improve quality and performance is welcome, but authorities should ensure it doesn’t end up being a needless bureaucracy. At the moment we have a particular set of terms and conditions that we stick to.”
Source:kolkatamirror
