MUMBAI: City-based consumer body Mumbai Grakah Panchayat (MGP) has filed a complaint with the MahaRERA, seeking to penalize Navi Mumbai’s planning agency, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO), for advertising 11 housing projects without registering with the regulator and not mentioning the registration numbers of the ones registered, on advertisements. In a letter to MahaRERA chief Gautam Chatterjee, the MGP has alleged that out of the 11 housing projects advertised in newspapers and marketed on its website, only two located in Ghansoli are registered.
“In spite of there being no MahaRERA registration for these nine projects, they are also being prominently advertised, marketed, with photos of prime minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, which is in gross violation of Section 3(1) of the RERA,” MGP said in the letter. When contacted, a CIDCO spokesperson told PTI, “Yes, we had not mentioned the registration numbers in the advertisements but we have already got registration numbers for four projects in total, including those in Ghansoli and Dronagiri. We have applied for registration for the remaining projects and will get them soon.”
CIDCO announced 14,838 affordable homes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, registrations for which commenced on August 13. Of the 14,838 houses, 5,262 apartments are being built for the economically weaker sections and the remaining 9,576 for the lower income group category. The housing projects will come up in 11 locations in the five nodes of Taloja, Kalamboli, Kharghar, Ghansoli and Dronagiri in Navi Mumbai.
Meanwhile, seeking imposition of penalty on CIDCO, MGP chairman Shirish Deshpande said, “We expect the government development authorities like these (CIDCO) to be more diligent and careful in the discharge of their obligations/duties under RERA. If private promoters and real estate agents could be penalized by MahaRERA for similar violation, the same law must also apply to CIDCO in this case.”
The MGP has sought imposition of penalty up to 10 per cent of the project’s cost, as provided under Section 59 (a) of RERA, for advertising nine unregistered projects in violation of Section 3 (a) and up to five per cent of the project cost of all 11 projects under Section 61, for not publishing MahaRERA registration numbers and not giving the MahaRERA website address in the said advertisement.
The consumer body also requested MahaRERA that the penalty to be paid by CIDCO should be recovered from its top officials responsible for such serious lapses. Meanwhile, in a separate release, CIDCO said another list of 25,000 homes would be released, by the end of 2018. PTI
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