It’s a double whammy for Sudhakar Lakshmanaraja, 37, having to pay both rent and interest on loans for the past six years for a flat he had purchased in 2018 — thanks to the delayed project.
While Lakshmanaraja and the other apartment buyers at the project in Thanisandra were promised they would get possession of their properties by 2019, nearly half the project is still incomplete.
Given this delay, Karnataka Real Estate Regulatory Authority (K-Rera) had issued a revenue recovery order in 2022 against the builder/promoter after the latter failed to pay a compensation or make a refund within the stipulated time.However, two years on, affected homebuyers are yet to receive any money.
According to latest available data accessed by TOI, as of Aug 31, 2024, K-Rera has issued recovery orders worth more than Rs 707 crore in 1,539 cases, involving 257 projects in the state.
“I have repeatedly raised the ineffectiveness of Rera’s recovery process with multiple authorities. It’s my hard-earned money and savings from years,” Lakshmanaraja said.
According to K-Rera, while it is empowered to issue a revenue recovery order, the power to recover the money lies with the district administration.
Of these, only Rs 79 crore or about 11% has been recovered in 185 cases, while builders still owe homebuyers more than Rs 627 crore from 1,354 cases.
Advocate Anil Kalgi, a real estate investigator and secretary, Bangalore City Flat Owners’ Association, pointed out that first, K-Rera orders builders or promoters to pay compensation to homebuyers and if that is not done within 60-90 days, the revenue recovery order is issued.
“However, this money can be recovered only by the DC (deputy commissioner) and there’s no time limit for this in the rules. Also, in many of these cases, the projects are incomplete or haven’t started at all. How will the DC recover the money?” Kalgi said.
K-Rera chairperson Rakesh Singh clarified to TOI: “Recovery orders are issued when the person/organisation liable to pay does not honour it within the stipulated period. We are in constant touch with the district administrations. There will be some perceptible improvement in days to come.”Vikram Rai, president, Bangalore Apartments Federation (BAF), said while the builder has an obligation to build and deliver homes, in many cases, one of the two things happens: They either don’t deliver it on time and don’t deliver it to the quality and features they are supposed to provide or there are different kinds of compliance issues that individual consumers or homebuyers don’t know about.
“Rera is supposed to ensure these don’t happen. Unfortunately, it’s a law where every state must implement it, and strict implementation is not happening equally in every state, including in Karnataka,” he added.
Dhananjaya Padmanabhachar, sanchalak, Karnataka Home Buyers’ Forum, mooted the idea of a special revenue recovery officer under K-Rera.
“The chairman must appoint a revenue officer within Rera who will be responsible for the recovery of the money from the promoters with full execution powers. Such recovery agents have been placed in other state Reras. Why not in our state? If this happens, we can expect Rera orders to get executed faster so that homebuyers get justice,” he further said.
