MOFA Amendment: Builders Exempt From Criminal Action, MGP Alarmed

Mumbai Grahak Panchayat (MGP) is shocked to read the proposed amendment in MOFA as approved by the Maharashtra government cabinet and which is likely to be placed before both houses of state legislatire in this Nagpur Session.

The said amendment in MOFA is going to be tabled before the legislature under the pretext of allowing Deemed Conveyance for the real estate projects registered with MahaRERA. But at the same time this amendment says that other than Deemed Conveyance provision, other provisions of MOFA will not be applicable to the real estate projects registered by MahaRERA. This means that section 13 of MOFA, which provides for imprisonment for 3 to 5 years for criminal offences of the builders will no longer be applicable to any builders in future. The highly objectionable part is this amendment is sought to be made *with retrospective effect from 1st May 2017*. It clearly means that any builder who has violated any provisions of MOFA or RERA even in the past are being condoned through this *builder-friendly amendment* by the state government by rubbing salt on the wounds of thousands of home-buyers who have been cheated and duped by unscrupulous builders. This amendment is totally contrary to the very objective of MOFA which aims to protect the interest of gullible home-buyers and hence will not be sustained in law.

In fact for allowing Deemed Conveyance for RERA registered projects, no such amendment in MOFA was at all required. MOFA provisions, as they stand today, permit the Deemed Conveyance for RERA registered projects even otherwise. As such in the opinion of MGP this builder-friendly amendment in MOFA is totally unwarranted and not in public interest.

(The author is the chairman of MGP)