Eight years after Parliament passed the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is in the process of reviewing the functioning of the Act, including by holding regular meetings with homebuyers and setting up a data collection unit within the Ministry, The Indian Express has learnt. This, sources said, is to lay the groundwork for any future amendment to the Act, though there is no immediate proposal for the same. Under the Act, state-level Real Estate Regulatory Authorities (RERAs) have registered over 1.09 lakh real estate projects and disposed of over 1.11 lakh complaints, as per data provided by the Ministry to the Lok Sabha in August 2023. According to Ministry sources, senior officials have started holding regular meetings with homebuyers to gather feedback, which is being shared with the RERAs as well. The first such meeting was held on February 29 and chaired by Additional Secretary Satinder Pal Singh. The meeting was held to “deliberate upon the effectiveness of RERA across key dimensions namely transparency, accountability, information dissemination, grievance redressal among others”, the meeting notice had said. The Ministry is also setting up a data collection unit to gather data on the functioning of the RERAs over the years, it is learnt. Representing homebuyers, Abhay Upadhyay, the president of Forum for People’s Collective Efforts, attended the meeting. He welcomed the decision to hold regular meetings with homebuyers. However, he cautioned against any amendments till the Act in its present form was implemented fully and an assessment of its functioning carried out. During the meeting, he said he raised the issue of lack of information on the RERA websites, which as per the Act should have annual reports and quarterly progress reports of builders. He also pointed out that there were instances where RERAs had registered projects without verification of documents. He cited the example of project in Uttar Pradesh, where the building plan for valid for five years but the completion date submitted by the builder was two years past that. “Even today, what is the exact scenario, we are unaware as relevant data is not available nor authorities are giving any annual report,” Upadhyay wrote in his written submission to the Ministry. After the meeting, sources said, the Ministry wrote to the RERAs regarding uniformity in the information available on their websites and decided to collect data on the number of projects approved, their progress, the number of projects delayed etc. The All-India Forum of RERAs (AIFORERA), a voluntary organisation of real estate authority members across states, too, held a meeting in Lucknow on March 19 and 20 where some of the feedback from homebuyers was discussed. AIFORERA chairperson Shrikant Baldi, who is the Himachal Pradesh RERA chairperson, said a checklist would be sent to all RERAs of the information that should be available on the websites. He added that the proposals for amendments sent by the AIFORERA in the past few years would be reviewed by a sub-committee and a fresh proposal sent to the Ministry.
