New Delhi: While Haryana towns may be on their way to regulate property dealers by issuing licence and identity card to them, the Real Estate Management (Regulation and Control ) Bill 2006 of Delhi - proposed by the urban development ministry - is stuck in red tape, largely due to lack of bureaucratic will to let it through.

The bill was supposed to have regularised the real estate scene in Delhi through a similar set of measures for promoters and the establishment of a regulatory authority and an appellate tribunal to resolve related issues.

The reason: Delhi, unlike its immediate neighbours, has no private entity that owns land on a largescale. The sole land-owning agency in Delhi DDA is manned by the same babus, whose counterparts in the Union urban development ministry, control the fate of the Bill which seeks to clip the wings of DDA to reduce it almost to a toothless planning body in the nature of a National Capital Region Planning Board. Both DDA and MCD would, once the Bill (TOI has a copy of the Bill) is passed, be answerable to the proposed Real Estate Management and Regulatory Authority , which would essentially steal DDA's thunder in the same way as the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission has reduced Delhi Transco to a coordinating body.

The Bill excludes in the very way that it has been drafted, the small-time promoters, who procure individual plots in colonies to develop a number of flats as anybody who develops a building on a plot of less than 1,000 square metres, with upto four flats and a cumulative carpet area of not more than 4,000 square metres. Everybody else - in case of Delhi it can only mean DDA - would need a licence from the regulatory authority to develop every such project.

DDA, one of the most cash-rich government agencies, has a surplus corpus of Rs 10,000 crore and a yearly budget of about Rs 2,000 crore. It has direct control over 8,000-10 ,000 hectares of land and planning control over another 20,25,000 hectares. Despite these kind of resources, the agency, according to surveys done by the UD ministry, meets only 66% of the housing need of the city.

The regulatory authority will "make recommendations on protection of interest of allottees and, measures to facilitate competition and promote efficiency in real-estate management, apart from having powers to take suo-moto cognizance of any irregularity and "call upon any promoter at any time to furnish in writing such information or explanation relating to its affairs as the authority may require" .

Explained a UD ministry official: "It would mean that DDA's role is limited to overall urban planning and MCD's to give approvals to plans for individual properties. Which means both bodies would lose the importance they have right now in the city's scheme of things and senior posts would cease to be the 'plum postings' they are right now." The punishment for contravention of the provisions of the Bill can entail an imprisonment of upto three years and a fine of upto two lakh, depending on the nature of violation. No civil court would have jurisdiction in such matters which would be the prerogative of the appellate tribunal. Apart from promoters, the Bill would also make architects , engineers, estate agents and contractors answerable to the regulatory authority.

Union UD secretary M Ramachandran says: "The Bill has been in the works for some months now and needs to be placed in front of the Cabinet and the House."

abantika.ghosh@timesgroup .com

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