MahaRera Suggests appointing multiple agencies to drive Occupancy Certificates to projects

Speaking at CREDAI’s Event ‘YouthCon-19’ held In New Delhi on 13th Feb & 14th Feb 2019 , Shri Gautam Chatterjee, Chairman MahaRera opined that multiple agencies should be given the task of granting Occupancy Certificates to Housing projects in order to break the monopoly of a single officer on whom the onus is put at present. He informed that there were 700 projects in Maharashtra alone where developers had submitted all documents and applied for OC well in time but all their efforts were stonewalled by a single officer who had the authority to grant the OC. Although the approvals had been given by the same planning authority Mr Gautam Chatterjee stated that he failed to understand why the officer representing the same planning authority took so much time for granting the OC to the project which had been built in accordance to the Commencement certificate. He suggested the mechanism of outsourcing the process of granting Occupancy Certificates to multiple agencies having a panel of planners and architects to check and grant OCs to projects so as to break the monopoly of the single officer who had power to delay the OC without any reason due to his lack lustre attitude. Mr.Gautam Chatterjee, Maharashtra RERA Chief educated about RERA along with Mr.Rajive Kumar, Uttar Pradesh RERA Chief, Mr. Anthony De Sa, Madhya Pradesh Chief and Mr. K KKhandelval, Haryana RERA Chief weee present at the event. The MahaRera Chairman gave this opinion on the query by Mr Nayan Shah - President Credai MCHI who opined tha developers are looking for the day when the approval authorities could come under the ambit of RERA.