In maybe the first such ruling at least in Vidarbha, Maha-RERA has issued orders for attachment of unsold units of Nirmal Nagari Complex, off Umred Road, which has 540 odd residential flats apart from commercial space. The attached property will be sold to realize the fine levied on the society for various lapses.
The project was implemented by Nirmal Ujjwal Credit Cooperative Society, headed by businessman Pramod Manmode.
The order comes after the society failed to pay6 crore fine levied on it for not registering the project under Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Maha-RERA). Selling units without registering the project is a violation of RERA laws.
Since the builder failed to pay the fine, orders have been issued to the district collector to attach the property. Attempts to get response from Pramod Manmode failed. The property to be attached includes the units in Nirmal Nagari that have not been booked or mortgaged to any financial institution. If the property from the project falls short in recovering the fine amount, the personal assets of the defaulters too can be seized.
The responsible persons include Manmode and five other officials of the society. The defaulters will also have to disclose their property details and produce the property card. On failing to do so, the person can be sent to three months of imprisonment, says the attachment order issued by RERA.
The order also clarified that units or land that has been booked by a buyer or mortgaged to a financial institution should not be touched, so the project can be completed.
The builders had flouted the very basic requirement of RERA, which calls for registering every project before advertising or starting sales. The orders says that Nirmal Nagari project did not fall in the exempted category, yet the builder did not get it registered under RERA.
Also, despite getting an opportunity, the builder did not disclose the cost of the project, which was independently estimated by RERA to be at 300 crore.
Later, the builders’ counsel produced a document which showed that society’s claim for non-eligibility for registration was rejected by the high court. Based on it the society had assured to get the project registered within 60 days, however, it failed to do so.
It all began with a dispute between the residents and the builder over lack of basic facilities like water supply, security and other amenities. Even as residents had moved in and a corpus of Rs8 crore was created by taking one time maintenance deposit, the amount was not transferred to the house owners’ cooperative society.
Rather, the society itself was not formed by the builder. This led to a complaint by one of the residents that the project itself was not registered under RERA.
