Month-old Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) parcels off homeowners lacking the crucial document to state housing department for a solution
According to civic body's norms, any resident living in a building that doesn’t have an OC is liable for prosecution. Representational Image
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Were you planning to approach the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) with the issue that your building doesn't have an Occupancy Certificate (OC)? If yes, you're wasting your time. The Authority has passed the buck on to the state housing department, asking it to come up with a solution to the issue of developers giving possession of flats even if they haven't secured the all-important certificate for their building.
Nearly 56,000 buildings in Mumbai don't have an OC.
OC uncertainty
According to civic body's norms, any resident living in a building that doesn't have an OC is liable for prosecution. An OC ensures regular and normal water connection and property charges to the structure, as opposed to the high prices charged to buildings without an OC.
Also read - Mumbai: BMC plans to grant partial OC to semi-legal buildings
RERA officials, in a meeting with the housing department last week, suggested that those who have got possession of their houses but their building doesn't have an OC should approach the department, not the Authority. They proposed that the department should make getting deemed conveyance of such buildings easier, and that this was a better solution to the OC issue and would also help the residents in case of any redevelopment.
Last month, after RERA was set up, government officials had said that the Authority would also hear the pleas of those whose buildings didn't have an OC.
Officially speaking…
"There was a meeting with the housing department, during which we asked them to come up with a solution for this. If the procedure of giving deemed conveyance is fast-tracked, the problem of no OC will be reduced to a large extent," a senior RERA official said.
Also read: New, well-equipped beggars' home lies vacant; yet to receive OC from BMC
Retired bureaucrat and interim chairman of RERA Gautam Chatterjee said, "The Authority's main job is to make houses available to people who have invested in flats in a time-bound manner, and that's what our focus is going to be on." Housing department officials refused to comment, saying a decision is yet to be taken on this.
56k Number of buildings in the city without an OC
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