The state’s oldest legislation that safeguards the interests of home buyers, the Maharashtra Ownership Flat Act (MOFA) 1963, may soon be history.
On Wednesday, chairman of the Maharashtra RERA, Gautam Chaterjee wrote a letter to the State Housing Department asking for MOFA to be repealed.
RERA is the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, that came into effect in 13 states and united territories, including Maharashtra, in May this year. According to Chaterjee, RERA has provisions that override all other real estate acts.
Speaking at an affordable housing event on Wednesday, organised by Zee 24taas and DNA with CREDAI-MCHI (The Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry), he shared, “I have written to the government (housing department) on repealing MOFA.” He suggested, “a Maharashtra Transfer Act 2017 needs to be brought in.”
Chaterjee said that such an act could cover projects that do not require registration and hence are outside the ambit of RERA. “The new act will cover three aspects that are liability, conveyance and creation of a legal entity,” he said.
However, Dr Sanjay Chaturvedi, a real estate expert, said, “MOFA has the power of criminal proceedings. In 2012-13, too, there was an attempt to get rid of MOFA when the new Maharashtra Housing Authority was being formulated. Section 56 of the Act repealed MOFA, but since it wasn’t notified, the Act remained.”
“The builder lobby has always wanted to get rid of MOFA because it’s stringent and several sections allow criminal proceedings,” he said.
...& ANALYSIS
- MOFA and RERA contradict each other in a few areas including stipulations on the period within which conveyance has to be granted by the developer.
- With provisions for criminal proceedings, MOFA is a stringent act, and experts claim that is the reason the builder lobby has been calling for its repeal.
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 "Real estate")
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