New UPRERA rules to be notified soon

LUCKNOW: The UP government has rewritten real estate regulation rules, doing away with prodeveloper clauses that diluted country’s first-ever law to clean up a sector beset by problems of delayed projects. “The new rules have been vetted and would be notified very soon,” said a housing department official.

The selection process for appointment of chairman and members (three) to be appointed for UPRERA has been completed by the search committee formed by the state government. “The search panel has forwarded the applications it had received to the state government. The appointment panel headed by chief justice of the Allahabad High Court, would finalise the names,” said the housing department official.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath had asked the officials to have a fresh look at the rules drafted during the SP regime following allegations that they had been tailor-made to suit the interests of the developers and builders. The central law, which came into force on May 1 all over the country sets a three-month deadline ending on July 31 for the state governments to put necessary delivery mechanism and office-infrastructure in place for its effective implementation.

“We would have completed the process much earlier but for the administrative reshuffle in which some of those at the helm got transferred,” said the official. Then there were representations by real estate developers bodies, including UP Real Estate Developers Council, highlighting the ‘inconsistencies’ in the law and the ‘inherent problems’ they would face, which had to be taken care of, said the official.

The new rules bring all ongoing projects where completion certificate was not issued on May 1, 2016 when the Real Estate Regulation Act (RERA) was notified, into its ambit. The SP government had tweaked the definition of ‘ongoing project’ to keep majority of projects out of the purview of real estate regulator.