PUNE: Citizens, via the Maharashtra Society Welfare Association (MSWA), have written to the state housing minister, Atul Save, demanding a proper monitoring mechanism for redevelopment projects.
The MSWA has written to the minister with a proposal for regulatory authority to focus on the redevelopment of housing societies.
With maximum redevelopment projects being started in cities such as Mumbai, Pune, and Thane, residents cited that old structures that undergo redevelopment have no monitoring system pertaining to the timeline of such projects and a penalty for delay. It is leading residents of such societies to take up matters legally.
“We have reached out to the state government to establish a regulatory body that can undertake not only the redevelopment of housing societies on private land but also structures that come under government, MHADA, SRA, cessed buildings, etc,” Ramesh Prabhu, chairperson of MSWA, told TOI.
Members of the association hope that the state government will take up this issue in the new housing policy coming up next month.
While the state implemented the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, and was among the first to set up the MahaRERA authority, it failed to include redevelopment in the act, citizens argue.
“It is very unfortunate that the regulatory authority, RERA, which is supposed to regulate all real estate-related activities, does not consider the rights and interests of existing members. It is because the redevelopment projects are exempted from registration under Section 3(2)(c) of the RERA Act,” a homebuyer said.
As per the letter by the MSWA, such scenarios have created unrest and anxiety among the existing members since they have spent their life’s savings on buying homes in such projects.
“While the redevelopment activities in the state commenced in the 1990s with the introduction of the Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations (UDCPR) for Maharashtra State, it is a matter of concern for most of the redevelopment projects that are stalled at various stages, added a member of one such stalled project.
