Govt entities should curb consumers tendency for ‘forum shopping’, encourage them to approach RERA: Hardeep Singh Puri
New Delhi, May 9, 2023
Union housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Tuesday said the real estate regulatory law, RERA, has been enacted specially to deal with the sector and government entities need to resist the temptation to offer solutions that would encourage consumers for ‘forum shopping’ — approaching multiple forums for redressal of grievances.
“Let me put it for the sake of the record that the issues pertaining to the real estate sector have been made the subject of this forum, RERA. Prior to RERA, you had the consumer redressal mechanism...If I were also an affected party I would have gone for forum shopping, I would go here, there and then to the court. But let us resist the temptation of trying to solve the problem of another forum through a mechanism,” Puri said while addressing the meeting of the Central Advisory Council (CAC).
The minister’s observation came weeks after the consumer affairs ministry held a meeting with stakeholders to identify problems faced by consumers in the real estate sector even years after RERA came into force. According to the ministry, while the number of consumer complaints lodged with consumer commissions has reduced after RERA, still 10% of all the complaints with these commissions are related to the real estate sector. The consumer ministry has also set up a panel to suggest the model provisions in builder-buyer agreement for protecting the interest of homebuyers.
Puri said if the consumer forums had been that effective, then there would have been no need for RERA. He also said that there is a need to see that matters related to specific sectors are taken up with the forums which have been created for a particular purpose and that too by an act of Parliament like RERA. The minister said they have won the legal challenge for RERA. “Let’s not now try to weaken it by saying that other forums can also do it,” he said.
However, consumer rights activists said the issue of consumers exercising the option to approach multiple forums have been settled by different high courts and the Supreme Court on several occasions. In 2019, the apex court had held that the redressal mechanism or provisions under the RERA do not act as a bar to complaints under the Consumer Protection Act and the allottees or homebuyers are well within their rights to avail remedies under the CP Act as well as RERA and even the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
“Consumers will approach the forum where they get quick relief. In most cases the execution orders passed by the RERA authorities are not enforced and so people still approach the consumer commissions,” said a homebuyers’ representative who attended the CAC meeting.
During interaction with the CAC members, Puri also acknowledged this saying that the real estate regulators can take decisions, but implementation comes at the level of district magistrate. “If they don’t do so, people will take the matters to consumer commissions and that's a natural human tendency,” he said.
The minister said they will soon write to state chief secretaries urging them to take steps for faster implementation of the RERA orders while flagging that some states are “notoriously slow” in implementing orders and he will “deal with this politically”.
[The Times of India]
