HYDERABAD: Somesh Kumar, the chairman of Telangana State Real Estate Regulatory Authority (TS RERA), said on Thursday that measures would be taken to simplify the process of registering with RERA and that the process would also be made online soon. He pointed out that although the RERA is a good policy, it still needed to be implemented smoothly. It has to be streamlined by removing redundancies so that it can prove effective for real estate developers as well as the consumers, he said.
Speaking at an interaction session organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with real estate developers and builders, Kumar, who also serves as the Special Chief Secretary for the Revenue, Commercial Tax and Excise departments, pointed out that simplification procedures have, in fact, helped earn as much as Rs 975 crore revenue this year from the non-refundable application fees for the 2,216 excise shops in the State. The event also witnessed an announcement regarding the CII Excon event at Bengaluru.
Kumar said that the whole idea was to make the procedure simple, transparent and rationalised. He pointed out that there are many processes in the RERA that were not so logical, as the joint development agreement. “The implementation of RERA has brought in a level-playing field, as the real estate developers who didn’t follow norms earlier are falling in line now. However, there should be responsibilities on the buyers’ side too, so that a builder does not get cheated,” he added.
At the event, representatives of various real estate developers and builders’ associations highlighted issues ailing the sector. C Shekar Reddy, Convenor, Infra and Real Estate Panel, CII Telangana and CMD, CSR Estates Limited suggested that RERA can play a pro-active role in promoting the real estate sector, by setting up a grievance cell for developers. There exists a GST of up to 28 per cent for some building materials, which also needs to be revised.