Clean Up The Real Estate Business In Uttarakhand

WHEN THE FENCE EATS THE LAWN - THEN WHO WILL PROTECT IT FROM DESTRUCTION

(REIN IN THE BUILDER MAFIA)

It was recently that, the Garhwal Post had done a story on the Litany of Complaints which the owners of Arborea Luxury Homes have against the builder, Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, Gurgaon. In exercise of their individual rights, some owners as also the Resident Welfare Society of Arborea have approached the Consumer Commission of Dehra Dun to redress their long outstanding grievances related with construction, structural, maintenance, financial and related issues on which the builder has not delivered, short changed the unsuspecting buyer and continues to prevaricate. This has become the practice with most builders in Dehra Dun who are coming up with concrete monstrosities on every swathe of empty space, which has become available either through land use change, outright purchase of residential land or else demolition of existing property to make land available for residential complexes. To make matters more difficult for the people, adversely impact the living environment and create a situation, which will in the future surely spell disaster for those who exercise their choice to live in these multi storied residential complexes; the Mussoorie Dehra Dun Development Authority (MDDA) has approved the construction of six floor level condominiums. This in a seismic zone which is prone to earthquakes caused by a shift in the tectonic plates in the sub Himalayan regions. It seems the government of Uttarakhand has not got wise from the recent disaster that visited the hills in June this year and from which, life and living in the upper reaches of Garhwal and Kumaon regions is slowly limping back to normalcy, at a great cost to the life of people and animals who live here. It is most unfortunate that we live in a State which refuses to learn from its past follies and continues to err to the extent of being perceived as downright stupid and ‘dense as a post’. Then, when natural phenomenon, which bring destruction to life and property occur, the government hides behind the hopeless alibi of attributing the human catastrophe to the forces of nature and the wrath of the Gods.  There could not be a more fatuous explanation that can be given for the incompetency, intransigence to learn from the past and complete lack of accountability of the State government. It is the cliched neta – babu – mafia nexus, which continues to pull wool over the eyes of the Chief Minister and his minions, who are blinded by the lure of accumulating lucre for their political survival and by extension the power which flows from it. Uttarakhand will pay a very heavy price now and in the future for the avarice, which its politicians are consumed with and continue to profit from, without a worry for those who have put them to govern.

It is a thought which has been engaging my mind for quite some time and is that, those who live in residential housing complexes must educate themselves about their rights, individually as well as collectively. The RTI is a very potent instrument for eliciting all such information, which can uncover the manipulations that exist between the builders and the approving authorities and therefore must be used generously. While, it is a given that big sums of money are paid for approving unauthorized constructions within a residential complex, overlook blatant violations or else non implementation of the MDDA regulations, not adhere to the requirement of obtaining valid No Objection Certificates from several departments and organizations and completely disregard the mandatory need of a Completion Certificate to be given to the builder only after he has fully met his obligations with regard to the satisfactory completion of the entire project, which is to the satisfaction of the owners of apartments and their RWA / RWS. The compendium of the MDDA regulations is a well conceived document which has been thoughtfully compiled, but it is the violation of these very regulations and its non implementation, with the tacit approval of the same authority that must ensure its implementation. Is this not the story in our country on almost all matters, where the government and its many appendages function by becoming the hedge which instead of protecting the garden eats into it?

It is for the explicit information of all those who intend to buy apartments in the many housing complexes which are emerging in the city at an amazing speed, to ensure that they do not get entrapped by the tall and pompous claims of the marketing executives and the half truths as mentioned in the publicity brochures churned out by these builders. The reality which emerges later and once the payment for the piece of property has been made, changes the equation, making it completely lop sided, hugely imbalanced and in favour of the builder. It is then that the buyer feels duped and cheated and start his travail of running from pillar to post to get his grievances redressed. He knocks on the doors of the MDDA, Consumer Commission, Civil Courts and the management of the company, which sold him/her the apartment, and expects relief from here; which he may or may not get.

The Consumer Commission and the Consumer Forum are the two authorities, which ultimately instil hope in the hearts and minds of most people who petition these. The builders use a ploy to take Interest Free Maintenance Charges, calculated on square feet basis on the covered / super area, from buyers initially and subsequently wash their hands off to create a corpus from this big sum of money, by wrongly and falsely accounting for it and showing it as having been spent on exigencies beyond the control of the builder. This is one of the things, which Conscient Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, Gurgaon has done and the owners of property in Arborea Luxury Homes, Tarla Nagal, Shastradhara – Mussoorie Bye Pass road along with their RWA have petitioned the Consumer Commission, Dehra Dun to get their money back and into the corpus of the Society. Two more important issues which must be examined and looked into by the respective RWAs, must be the No Objection Certificate (NOC) obtained from the Central Ground Water Board for the use of ground water in the absence of municipal water supply and the commitment of the builder for construction of 15% dwelling units of the total number of apartments in the housing complex, for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) as stipulated in the regulations of the MDDA.

It has come to the comfort of owners of apartments through a Supreme Court judgement and verdict that, builders cannot charge apartment owners for stilt parking and the common spaces that exist in the housing complex are to be transferred to the RWA/RWS. Once the RWA/RWS is formed and the owners have taken possession of their apartments, the builder ceases to have any right over the common spaces. This was published in the Times of India New Delhi / Gurgaon edition, dated 11 Sept 2013. It is rather strange that despite a very unequivocal and precise verdict on a similar case, which was taken up with the Consumer Commission, Mumbai and complete relief given to the petitioner, the builders in Dehra Dun and Uttarakhand continue to do the contrary. The Sales Deeds made and registered with the sub registrar’s office continue to be imbalanced and loaded in favour of the builder/ developer and charges are recovered for stilt parking from owners of apartments.

There continue to be a number of related issues on which the apartment owners feel aggrieved with the builder/developer and fight a long drawn battle in the commissions, courts and quasi government bodies, that draws upon their time, money and energy to little and partial avail. Therefore, it is in the larger and purposeful interest of the people of Dehra Dun and Uttarakhand to come together in a forum which represents the RWAs/RWSs in the city and join hands to break the nexus which exists between the law makers, implementer and breakers, who roam free and with impunity, owing to the power and position they wield in the complex matrix of greed and corruption that prospers in Uttarakhand.

Brigadier S D Dangwal

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