UP RERA directs authorities to start registration of projects

The Uttar Pradesh real estate regulator has asked local authorities to start the registration process of realty projects under the RERA Act for making builders accountable and addressing rising complaints from buyers in the state.

UP Real Estate Regulatory Authority chairman Rajive Kumar in a statement said the authority has received about a 1,000 complaints with respect to projects and promoters from outside the planning areas mainly from the districts of Lucknow and Barabanki.

The complaints vary from non-implementation of the projects to the promoter having run away with the money of the buyers, he said.

The RERA Act applies only to the real estate projects with area of 500 sq metres or more and with eight apartments or more in planning areas.

"RERA cannot extend relief to such buyers unless the project can be registered in Rera and invited the attention of the participating officers to the provisions of Section 3 of the Rera Act wherein a provision has been made that in order to protect the interest of the buyers it can direct a promoter to register in Rera a project outside planning area and that the provisions of Rera will apply to such a project from the date of its registration in RERA," he added.

The UP RERA chief held a meeting at the RERA office in Greater Noida to discuss approval and regulation of layout plans of the real estate projects outside the planning areas.

The meeting was attended by Anurag Srivastava, Principal Secretary of Panchayati Raj, Mahendra Prasad, Secretary of Industrial Development and CEO LIDA, Preeti Shukla, Secretary of Panchayati Raj, Ajai Chauhan, Housing Commissioner, Masoom Ali Sarvar, Director of Panchayati Raj, MP Singh, Secretary of Lucknow Development Authority, among others.

Kumar, however, clarified that a project can be registered in Rera only if the layout plan of the project has been approved by the concerned local authority, which means zila panchayat in most of the cases.

Rera has already engaged UP Remote Sensing Application Centre for carrying out the site inspection of real estate projects within 10 km of LDA limits in the districts of Lucknow and Barabanki with the help of satellite data, according to the statement.

Anurag Sivastava, principal secretary, said in some of the Zila Panchayats the bye-laws relating to the approval of the projects have not been adopted so far.

However, he assured to direct the districts concerned to adopt the bye-laws soon.

"They will also work effectively to check the breaches of the sanctioned plans or the development of real estate projects without required approvals," according to the statement. The progress would be reviewed next month, it added.