The Gurugram Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) court has marked a penalty of fine worth over Rs.6 lakh on Vatika Limited for violating advance payment as well as buyer-builder agreement norms. One of the two in Haryana, which is known as RERA court looks into the matters related to real estate disputes, issued an order on the complaint of five buyers who said they paid for commercial units in a Vatika project but were moved to another without their consent.
The Gurugram-based company Vatika Limited accepted full payment from the buyers without executing the builder-buyer agreement (BBA), the RERA court said in an April 5 order, which was made available on its website on April 15.
The RERA act clearly declared that, a promoter can’t accept more than 10% of the total cost of an apartment, plot, or building as advance payment from a buyer without a written agreement. It also said that, the agreement has to be registered as well. Something the real estate company didn’t do.
The complaint was lodged and moved to the authority in October 2022, stated that they booked commercial units Vatika India Next project in Sector 82 of Gurugram in 2018 and paid the full amount. They didn’t sign a builder-buyer agreement.
During 2019, Vatika transferred their units “without their consent” to Vatika One on One in Sector 16, 10 km away from the original site, and also reduced the size to 500 square feet from the original 1,000 sq ft. They said that, Vatika Limited took 100% of the consideration without executing the BBA in violation of the RERA Act, 2016.
RERA’s order said, “hereby imposes a penalty of Rs 1,00,000 in each complaint and further directs the promoter to execute the registered buyer’s agreement as per the model agreement provided in the Real Estate Regulation and Development Rules 2017 within 30 days from the order failing which the Authority shall be bound to invoke penal action under Section 63.”
The authority also imposed a fine of Rs. 25,000 for each complaint and ordered the complainants have to be paid within 30 days from the date of the order. They also asked Vatika Limited to pay interest for every month of delay from the due date of possession till a valid offer of possession.
Gaurav Rawat, the legal counsel for the allottees, informed "Since there was no BBA signed, there was no definite written date of possession but the authority has taken into consideration 2023 as the year of possession considering 2019 as the booking year, when our units were transferred to the other project."
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