CUTTACK: In a significant ruling, the Orissa High Court has held that the Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act, 2011, cannot be allowed to govern real estate transactions.The court has expressed serious concern over property-related disputes being perilously brought within the dragnet of criminal proceedings by invoking the OPID Act. The court said the relevant law tailor-made for property related disputes would be the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 which categorically caters to such situations.
RERA Act was enacted to achieve three main purposes - increase investments in the real estate sector by ensuring security, fairness and transparency; protecting buyers and regulating developers.“This court laments to note that the provisions of RERA which despite being a well thought out code by itself is not being resorted to. Instead, such circuitous proceedings (invoking OPID Act) are being resorted which is neither to the benefit of home buyers nor to the real estate sector at large,” Justice SK Panigrahi said in a September 24 order, a copy of which was made available on Tuesday.
The observation came while quashing criminal proceedings initiated under Section 6 of the OPID Act against a person involved in real estate transactions. It however declined to interfere with the proceedings initiated against the person under section 420 and other provisions of IPC.
Justice Panigrahi said the objective of the State legislature in enacting the OPID Act was aimed at protecting the interests of gullible depositors who were conned into participating in a scheme or arrangement with unscrupulous financial establishments involved in the business of receiving such deposits. “By no stretch of imagination could the provisions of OPID Act be contemplated to mean that the intendment of the State legislature was to bring simple transactions pertaining to sale/transfer of immovable property within the purview of the Act,” he observed.
“It could never have been the intention of the legislature to give unbridled power to the police to destroy legitimate businesses in this country and reduce our countrymen to penury. By wrongly invoking the OPID Act which is neither conducive to the flat buyers nor to developers/realtors, in that process the real estate sector is going to be destroyed,” Justice Panigrahi warned.