On Thursday, 67-year old Leelavati Rai won a twodecade-old battle against developer RS Desai Builders and developers who never handed her possession of the promised flat at Andheri.
Following the Bandra consumer court’s order, the developers filed an affidavit on Thursday agreeing to refund Rai the current market value as per the prevailing Ready Reckoner rates. Rai, who had paid Rs 4 lakh nearly 19 years ago, will now get five times that sum in addition to compensation for the mental agony and legal expenses incurred by her.
The order is noteworthy since under the Maharashtra Ownership of Flats Act, developers could till date get away with paying a mere 9 per cent per annum interest if they cannot complete the construction in time or if they have to cancel the agreement due to unforeseen circumstances.
“My mother had invested in the flat in 1987 as my dad was to retire and shift out of his official quarters four years later. However, the builder kept delaying the project on one pretext or the other. He completed one wing of the building while the other, where we had purchased a flat, was never taken up. Finally, my parents resigned themselves to the fact that this may never work out and moved to their native place in Mangalore,” said Leelavati’s daughter Sarita Shetty, who is based in Prabhadevi and who fought the case on her behalf.
In a similar case, in an order released in January this year, the consumer court of South Mumbai directed Kharghar-based developers Adhiraj Construc tion to provide a flat to a flat buyer who had booked a flat at their Kharghar project in 2002. The developer was ordered to either give the buyer a flat of the same size in the same locality or alternatively, the current market value of the flat.
“The ruling was a first of its kind in Maharashtra wherein it was ordered that the flat buyer should be given an alternative accommodation or the market value of the flat. Various courts including the Supreme Court have at the most ordered builders to pay up to 18 per cent interest, but now flat buyers can demand compensation as per the prevailing Ready Reckoner rates if not a flat in the locality,” said advocate Uday Wavikar, the counsel in the case.
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