BENGALURU: Challenging the restrictions imposed on the activities of house building, co-operative societies and also retrospective operation of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA Act), Karnataka State Government Employees House Building Cooperative Society and others have approached the high court.
Hearing a batch of petitions, Justice B S Patil on Monday issued notice to the state and Union governments and adjourned the hearing to August 11. The petitioners said the retrospective operation of RERA has taken away the rights provided to them under the Karnataka Cooperative Societies Act. The reasonable restrictions imposed on the activities of cooperative societies under Sections 3, 4 and 13 are affecting their businesses, they claimed.
They added that there are three ongoing semi-finished projects — two in Tavarakere and one in Nelamangala. In these projects, 4,000, 1,000 and 250 sites were being formed by the Karnataka State Government Employees House Building Cooperative Society and the process of transferring the rights of sites to more than 3,000 members is under way and civic amenity sites have been handed over to authorities concerned. With the retrospective effect of RERA, it will prove to be a hurdle for ongoing projects as these projects also need to be registered under Section 3 of the RERA Act, they said.
The petitioners said the RERA Act is against the provisions of the Cooperative Societies Act, which is a state Act. Section 3 prohibits a promoter, which includes cooperative societies, from advertising, marketing, booking and selling or offering for sale any plot or apartment without such a project being registered with the Real Estate Regulatory Authority. And the requirement of completion certificates before any offer can be invited would adversely affect the autonomy of societies, they said.
Section 3 was brought into force with prospective effect from May 1, 2017. The state government published the rules only July 11 and thus it is impractical for a society to register projects by July 31. Section 4 which defines co-operative societies as promoters, making registration of any real estate projects mandatory is a task, they said.
Consider Prof’s application for V-C post: HC
The High Court on Monday directed the search committee, constituted to find a vice-chancellor for Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS), to provisionally accept the application filed by Dr A M Jagadeesh and interview him.
Dr Jagadeesh, Professor of Anaesthesiology, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology and Vascular Sciences and Research and aspirant of the V-C’s post, had challenged the notification issued by the state that the applicant’s age should not exceed 62 years. Justice Raghvendra S Chauhan passed the interim order and made it clear that the V-C’s appointment will be subject to the result of the writ petition.