The Madhya Pradesh government on Friday ordered a thorough investigation on an alleged Rs 300 crore scam in which Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) issued false house completion certificates to more than 100 under construction housing projects.
Allegedly back-dated completion certificates were issued to housing projects that were incomplete in an attempt to save the builders from the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) regulations.
Commissioner of Urban Administration Department (UAD) Vivek Agrawal will head the investigation. Almost entire of BMC's building permission section had to be shifted after the scam was exposed, the Times of India reported.
According to Times of India, RERA's chairman Anthony DeSa had earlier warned BMC of its irregularities but it did not help. DeSa also received complaints from some people in October about houses they had booked.
"When builders were questioned with regard to those complaints, they produced completion certificates from BMC but the pictures that the complainants had shown made it amply clear that the houses were incomplete," said DeSa.
DeSa had also asked the BMC to verify the reliability of those completion certificates but have not responded yet to his query.
On Thursday, the Bombay High Court had ruled that all the incomplete and ongoing housing projects will also be covered under the RERA Act.
Some states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh had allegedly refrained from keeping the ongoing projects under the watch of RERA.
RERA was implemented on 1st May 2017 to protect the interest of home buyers and also push investments in the country's real estate industry.
It was essential to implement RERA because for a long time in India, home buyers have complained that the real estate transactions were in favour of the builders.
RERA aims to create more equitable and fair transactions between the seller and the buyer of properties. It is expected that RERA will make real estate purchase simpler through better accountability and transparency.
