REMINDING HRERA of the objectives with which it was formed, an aggrieved in the housing project Ess Vee Apartments, Sector 20, Panchkula, has put up several questions on the functioning and accountability of the authority. Pawan Rawal (63), a retired Indian Oil official, who had booked a flat in 2011, has been running pillar to post for the past several years in an attempt to get back his hard-earned life savings. "Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 was legislated primarily with the objectives of consumer protection, uniformity, standardization of business practice and transactions in the real estate sector efficiently and transparently, reduce frauds and delays and fast track low-cost dispute redressal mechanism. The entire process of getting justice and achieving the intended objectives is via adjudicating and passing of the orders by RERA and execution of the orders passed by Authority/Adjudicating officer," said Rawal. It has been a decade and a half since over 400 people had invested their money into the 'Ess Vee Apartments' project. The project had offered the investors, mostly senior citizens and retired officials, a luxuriously developed society with spacious 3bhk homes. Despite the arrests of the accused and after several year-long fights, the aggrieved are yet to get any relief in the matter. These home buyers had filed petitions before H-RERA in 2018, and after prolonged hearings, orders were passed that directed the respondent builder to refund the money to home buyers with applicable interest. The builder failed to comply with the orders, and homebuyers had to file execution petitions before H-RERA in 2019. These homebuyers have been suffering for more than two years because of repeated omissions/commissions of the H-RERA in publishing orders against execution petitions. The errors being committed by H-RERA one after the other in publishing the orders are not related to judgment but are clerical (calculation errors/mismatch of names in the recovery certificates), the home buyers allege. "The delay in getting justice is solely attributable to visible and admitted inefficient/unprofessional working of H-RERA. At every hearing of review petitions, Authority admits its mistake, assures that it will not occur again but then commits a new mistake in the fresh order," says Rawal. "The repeated omissions/commissions in publishing the orders or issuing recovery certificates have disappointed the complainant home buyers and forced them to conclude that these were done deliberately to derail the process. The complainant home buyers have been pointing out to Authority about the deficiencies observed in the orders published by H-RERA. They are advised to file review petitions to get the errors rectified even though the Authority has the powers to rectify its mistakes suo moto. It makes new mistakes repeatedly, and the complainants, after spending valuable resources, find themselves exactly where they were in 2019," he added. Questioning checks on HRERA, he asked, "In absence of any check on the functioning of Authority, it continues to commit errors. When those mistakes are pointed out, it blames one or the other officer in the system. H-RERA is not responding to any request of the complainants to reveal the name of the officials responsible for the errors, action taken against them and measures taken to avoid such mistakes from happening again. It appears there exists no mechanism to fix the responsibility of the erring officials." The homebuyers have approached several authorities, including the Chief Secretary of the state government, to establish irregularities in the H-RERA's functioning but have not received any response from them. More than 400 people have allegedly been defrauded of more than 300 crores in the matter, the FIRs allege. Allegations of fraud by misappropriating and diverting the funds collected from all the allottees have also been levelled against the accused, Vinod Bagai. All FIRs state that the victims had been lured by advertisements to invest in a three BHK for 67.7 lakhs at Project ESS VEE apartments on the promise of possession of flats within three years in 2011. Having waited several years, an association of the aggrieved started filing the FIRs in 2019. It was on March 26 this year, that after the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the prime accused Vinod Bagai was arrested and bailed on medical grounds in the Samar estate fraud case. The accused's wife, Sunita Bagai, and his relative, Virender Bagai, were arrested on February 19 and sent to judicial custody. While the co-accused wife was recently granted bail, his co-accused brother, Virender, is still lodged at the Ambala jail. The fraud had come to light when the first FIR in the matter was registered on July 31, 2019. As many as 18 FIRs have since been filed in the case against the accused spanning over a time period of more than one and a half years at the sector 20 police station of Panchkula.
