Indian Express | Home buyers’ interest paramount: CM Yogi Adityanath at RERA conclave

Nov 05,2019

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday said the interest of home buyers was of paramount importance to his government and lamented that sometimes, they are the victims of a double whammy with their money being stuck and yet they have to keep paying loan installments.

Accompanied by Union Minister of State for Urban Development Hardeep Singh Puri, Adityanath was speaking at the first national conclave of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority(RERA) held in Lucknow.

“However, this does not mean that the interest of other sectors associated with the real estate will be neglected. If builders fulfill their promises transparently, then all possible help will be provided to them as per rules. If this happens, the real estate sector will once again recover from recession,” said Adityanath, adding that RERA aims to take real estate to greater heights again. He said that in the first year of his government, around one lakh houses were provided to buyers.

Speaking about the widely held notion that any chief minister who goes to Noida does return to power, he said that it is a myth created as part of a conspiracy by those who have invested their black money in Noida, Greater Noida or near Yamuna Expressway.

“It was a myth that a chief minister should not go to Noida or Greater Noida. However, I went there and listened to the home buyers and builders, after which I realised that the problems are not as big or serious as they are presented. People who wanted these problems to persist did not want me there. Either, the money received from home buyers was distributed by the culprits among themselves or it was invested in some other sector. A visit by any compassionate person to the area could have exposed the culprits, and thus the propaganda,” he said.

The chief minister said political and administrative dishonesty is also at the root of the mess in the realty sector.

On the occasion, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri claimed that before Rera was brought in by the Narendra Modi government, corruption was prevalent in the realty sector.

“Before RERA, corruption was prevalent in this sector. After agriculture, real estate sector has maximum scope. Earlier, this was unorganised. Within a year after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi organised the sector through Rera, and in the coming days, we will make RERA more effective and transparent. My aim is to change the course of urbanisation in the coming days,” said Puri. The Real Estate (Regulation and Development ) Act, which established RERA in each state, was passed in March 2016.

The minister said in the coming days, the Model Tenancy Act and Real Estate E-Commerce Portal will be launched.

Talking to the media after the conclave, UP Rera chairman Rajive Kumar said several recommendations, including execution of rules and possible synergy between the legal forums where the buyer can go, were discussed in the conclave. He said that the state real estate regulatory has resolved around 12,500 cases – 40 per cent of the total complaints.

“On legal forums, the Supreme Court has said that all complainants have the freedom to approach Rera and the consumer forum. It was discussed if it was possible that all these forums work in synergy so that there is no confusion. Another recommendation was that at present, Rera can only give direction to the builder, agent or buyer, but there are several cases in which someone else is responsible. For example, there are cases in which a bank sanctioned a loan but stopped it midway. A possibility of such rights under which we can ask them was also discussed,” said Kumar.

Responding to a question, he said there are several real estate related complaints against development authorities and the same set of rules are applied on them.