'HRERA issues 240 recovery certificates, only 1 executed'

GURUGRAM: A report from the District Revenue Officer (DRO) revealed that the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (HRERA) Gurugram issued 240 recovery certificates against several defaulter builders, but only one had been realised so far.

The report added that the remaining 239 certificates have been sent to the concerned district collectors or tehsildar in Gurugram and other states like Delhi and Kolkata.

The certificates were issued to major builders, like IREO Realtech Pvt Ltd, Parasvnath Developers Ltd, Spaze Towers Pvt Ltd, Ansal Housing Pvt Ltd, Ashiana Dwellings Pvt Ltd, Imperia Structure Pvt Ltd, Raheja Developers Pvt Ltd, Emaar MGF Land Ltd, International Land Developers Pvt Ltd, among others.

Former HRERA Gurugram chairman in February this year had claimed that 25,509 complaints it received since February 2018 when the authority came into force at New PWD Resthouse Civil Lines Gurugram with an objective to bring relief to Gurugram homebuyers cum aggrieved allottees in what the authority had claimed to have disposed of 7,000 cases.

The authority had said they received 25,509 complaints till February 3, 2023, of which 12,640 cases were pursued further by the complainants through the court and the remaining 12,869 cases have been settled between the parties outside court due to interventions of HRERA.

But the authority has not been able to achieve its objective when it comes to fixing erring promoters and the regulator has been able to realise only one of the total 240 recovery certificates from the builder issued by it for the return of allottees’ money.

It has now come to the knowledge that most of the home buyers despite getting refund orders and recovery certificates from the HRERA have not been able to get the money refunded from the developer as the execution of recovery certificates by the Collector has not been effective enough.

The execution of recovery certificates has become a bottleneck in the successful execution of the RERA Act.

In November 2022, the authority had put the ILD promoter behind the bar for not obeying the order of the Adjudicating Officer (AO) of HRERA by not refunding the recovery amount to the bonafide decree holder allottee and the matter later escalated to the Punjab and Haryana High Court after which the DRO Gurugram was delegated with the power of recovery amounts from the promoters based on the decisions of the AO of HRERA Gurugram.

Once the recovery certificate is issued by the HRERA and sent to the DRO, it becomes the responsibility of the Collector and Tehsildar concerned to execute the same as per the procedure prescribed.

"The Punjab and Haryana High Court had recently issued direction to the state government to execute the decree order within three months. So that any recoverable amount is recovered within the shortest possible time but the government body did not take any action in this regard. So without execution of the decree recovery of money and the objective of HRERA is toothless and ineffective," said Sukhbir Yadav, an advocate at the HRERA authority of Gurugram.