Residents from over 1,000 housing societies in the western suburbs came forward to question prominent names from the registrar’s office, legal experts and developers on issues concerning redevelopment, on Saturday. The first part of the two-day long conference was organised by DNA Property and held at the NSE Grounds, Goregaon, with Maharashtra Societies Welfare Association (MSWA) as the knowledge partner.
Most residents questioned the experts on the process of getting into redevelopment, area of property to be redeveloped, change of title on property card, lack of records, conveyance, ownership, cheating issues in the society and by developers and fast tracking of the deemed conveyance. Other important discussions were about land lease issues that hinder redevelopment, taxation, CRZ issues, grant of FSI, paying of project management consultants and minor benefits that societies look to capitalise upon in cases of redevelopment.
Chief guest SP Ghorpade, district deputy registrar (western suburbs) replied to many residents’ queries. Director of Rustomjee, Chandresh Mehta, legal advispr Parimal Shroff, advocate and solicitor Sandeep Vima Dalal, director of Sheth Corp, Chintan Sheth, AVP business development of Kalpataru Group, Pramod Kale, and Ramesh Prabhu of MSWA attended the conference, too.
“As a government representative, you boast of fast tracking deemed conveyance. Why does it take so much time and documents before we get it?” questioned a resident. Ghorpade said, “There are 28 Acts involved before deemed conveyance is given to a society. In the past six months, we have tried to clear 24 orders.” Residents were also keen to know what they can do regarding the documents the BMC often claims as ‘missing’ or ‘non-traceable’. “Go to the appellate authority. They will pass an order to recreate a file,” said Dalal.
Another resident wanted to know about the right area to considered if the property card, lease agreement and conveyance deed all showed different area for the plot. “The least of the three will be taken into consideration, unless a society wants to get it redone,” said Mehta.
Kalpataru gave a presentation on the stages in the process of redevelopment. It explained the planning state, appointing a project management consultant to inviting tenders and other processes before redevelopment.
“It is always better that you have consent from all. Or someone is bound to stall the process,” said Sheth. To ensure that societies get a fair deal, legal expert Shroff commended the new policy put in place by the civic commissioner. “The redefined FSI is a good way of checking all that was not charged into that domain,” said Shroff. He suggested that if residents manage to follow the provisions of Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act for redevelopment, they had a better chance of courts siding with them.
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