Gurugram: State Rera to reduce average time for plea resolution to 15 days

The Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (H-Rera) plans to reduce the average time taken to resolve a petition–from three months to 15 days– this year onwards. To achieve this objective, the authority will hold summary trials and set up a digital judicial court to help reduce arbitration time and adjudicate disputes between homebuyers and developers, according to officials in the know.

Dr KK Khandelwal, chairman, H-Rera, Gurugram, said that currently the authority takes around three months to resolve a petition, and reducing this time would greatly benefit homebuyers, who are already suffering due to project delays.

Another reason for the authority to embrace the idea of digital courts and summary trials is that the resolution of complaints has slowed down over the past couple of years due to repeated disruptions because of the pandemic. According to data shared by H-Rera, the authority received 5,733 complaints from homebuyers in 2021 and was able to resolve only 1,669 cases–a disposal rate of around 30%. However, in 2020, the authority received 4,830 complaints and managed to resolve 3,832 cases, a disposal rate of around 79%.

A comparison of the data in the last two years revealed that while the disposal of cases reduced by almost 50% in 2021, the number of complaints rose by around 20% last year.

Pointing to the frequent lockdowns as the reason, Dr Khandelwal said that disruptions caused by Covid-19 last year impacted the work, but the authority had now decided to adopt the digital court system and summary trials, to accelerate the resolution of complaints. “The digital court will allow a person to lodge a petition from anywhere without being physically present. The decisions will be faster and based on quick facts. The summary trials will also enable quick resolution of complaints,” he said.

According to legal experts, in summary trials, procedures are simplified, cases are decided speedily and recording is done summarily. Mostly minor cases and small offences are tried using this method. The objective of these trials is to reduce the high caseload in a judicial system.

“We learnt a lot over the last three years and faced teething troubles, which have been resolved. We will use a mix of technology and human resources to optimise results for homebuyers. Rera Act also faced legal challenges but these are now over as the apex court has decided the matter and we are poised for better implementation and enforcement,” he said.

Khandelwal added that of the 82,000 petitions disposed of by H-Rera courts across the country, the bench in Gurugram had disposed of almost 18% of the petitions filed across the country.

“Since the inception of the Gurugram bench, we received 19,136 petitions, of which 14,801 were disposed of, he said. The authority said that it had managed a disposal rate of 75% since its inception in 2017.