The Supreme Court’s (SC’s) recent verdict upholding the jurisdiction of the Real Estate (Regulation & Development) Act, 2016, or RERA, in two different matters is expected to help homebuyers escape unnecessary harassment and put pressure on unscrupulous developers to toe the line.

Firstly, the SC’s verdict — upholding the jurisdiction of RERA on all realty projects that were ongoing and had not received completion certificate until the law came into effect — is now expected to trigger a major change in state-specific rules modelled on this Act.

The ‘ongoing projects’ included launches which had not obtained ‘completion certificate’ from civic agencies when the RERA Act was notified in the country.

“The ‘ongoing projects’ were deliberately brought within the ambit of RERA at a time when the development of real estate projects was not regulated and homebuyers