M A I N   N E W S

Haryana increases penalty for offences under apartment Act
Pradeep Sharma/TNS

Chandigarh, January 29
Owning your dream home is set to get expensive in Haryana. The Hooda government has substantially hiked penalty for compounding offences under the Haryana Apartment Ownership Act — a development which will jack up rates of group housing society flats and apartments put up for sale by builders.

Under the new policy, apparently aimed at mopping up additional resources for the cash-strapped government, the Department of Town and Country Planning Department has decided to impose heavy penalty for compounding offences under the Act.

“Now the delay in the execution of the deed of apartment after paying stamp duty to competent authority beyond a period of 90 days of getting completion certificate or occupation certificate will attract a penalty of Rs 1 lakh for a period of one year,” sources told The Tribune. For a delay from one to two years, the allottee will have to shell an amount of Rs 2 lakh while for delay from 2-3 years, he will have shell a hefty fine of Rs 3 lakh. “For the delay beyond three years, the allottee will have to pay a whopping Rs 3 lakh plus a monthly amount of Rs 50,000 per month”, said sources.

Observers said now the apartments would cost more as allottees would have to pay several lakhs of rupees as the stamp duty for property registration in major cities. This would also have an impact on the re-sale of the apartments in the state as original owners would demand extra amount to compensate them for stamp duty payment. According to the Act, it is mandatory for the society managements and the builders to execute and get registered a deed of declaration within 90 days after obtaining part completion/completion certificates under the Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Act, 1975, or occupation certificates under the Punjab Scheduled Roads and Controlled Areas Restriction of Unregulated Development Act, 1963.

However, the powerful politician-bureaucratic-coloniser nexus, which controls cooperative housing sector and real estate sector in the state, has been violating these mandatory legal provisions with impunity. Even the cooperative department had been allowing the transfer of apartments in the cooperative housing societies without deed of declaration putting the state exchequer to a substantial financial loss by way of evasion of stamp duty. BK Sanghi, chairman of the Haryana Group Housing Federation, hoped that if implementated in letter and spirit the new policy would go a long way in making the real estate transactions more transparent and bringing in more revenue to state coffers.

“Even the Supreme Court had ruled that a real estate transaction can only be considered valid if it is duly executed and registered. Though new rules will make the residential property costly yet it would guard these transactions against frauds and make these legal in the eye of the law,” he added.

expensive living

• Experts said the apartments would cost more as allottees would have to pay several lakhs of rupees as stamp duty for property registration in major towns of Haryana.
• This would also have an impact on the re-sale of apartments as original owners would demand extra amount to compensate them for stamp duty payment.