Bombay High Court reprimands MahaRERA for not holding in-person hearings – Writ Petition filed by Clove Legal on behalf of aggrieved home buyer.

Clove Legal successfully represented a home-buyer in a Writ Petition filed before the Hon’ble Bombay High Court, whereby the Hon’ble Court while considering the common grievances of the home-buyers through our client, directed the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA) to review its Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and its Rules and Regulations for conducting effective hearing of the cases before the Authority and speedy disposal of the same.

Prior to Covid 19 pandemic, the hearings before MahaRERA were held physically. During Covid 19, the hearings were being held online to keep the legal system still accessible to the parties. However, while all courts and tribunals resumed to physical hearings or hybrid hearings (both physical and virtual), MahaRERA continued to function virtually. This made it difficult for the advocates and parties to approach the authority for an urgent hearing in the matters. Due to such inaccessibility, our client despite of having filed his Complaint in December 2020 obtained the final order in his favour only in November 2022 (after two years). Thereafter, due to non-compliance of the order by the developer, our client then initiated execution proceedings in January 2023 which were deferred for over a period of more than one (1) year until March 2024, when MahaRERA reserved the matter for final order in execution proceedings. However, no final order issuing a recovery warrant was passed for over a year. Hence, the writ petition was filed before the Bombay High Court, whereby the Hon’ble Court was pleased to direct MahaRERA to dispose of the execution proceedings in a time bound manner and further, directed the authority to suggest guidelines to put its own house in order.

Our team comprised of Dharmesh Kotadia, Senior Partner; Chitrangada Singh, Senior Associate and Ayush Yadav, Associate.