In a judgment which will help homebuyers in a major way, the Bombay High Court bench comprising Hon’ble Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice A M Badar ordered that once the occupation certificate has been received by the developer, there was no justifiable cause for not issuing conveyance deed in favour of the purchasers of flats. This is in furtherance of the case in which a developer did not issue conveyance deed in favour of the buyer, despite the expiry of five year period from the date of agreement which forced the purchasers to seek deemed conveyance.
If a promoter fails to execute conveyance in favour of the cooperative society, the competent authority can take necessary action.
In the case the developer alleged that the said competent authority gave a premature order as the agreement with all the purchasers had a clause (clause 8) stipulating the period of execution of conveyance deed as five years from the date of agreement. The Court on the other hand had given a wider interpretation while calculating the five year period from the date of the agreement. The Court rejected the argument of the developer that the application for deemed conveyance and the consequent order was premature.
Another aspect which was brought it was that of “unfair trade practice.” This was in relation to the Petitioners. However, the Court denied to delve into this matter for clause (8) of the Agreement which entitled the Builder to deem conveyance of the land in favour of the society for a period of 5 years frustrated the attainment of the statutory intent.
Lastly, the Court also took into account the contention that FSI cannot be altered on the said land as it is situated in the funnel area and near to the airport as the maximum height 41.720 meters was granted to the Petitioner by Airport Authority of India in 2010. Thus neither the Petitioner nor society cannot explicit any further FSI on the land in the dispute.
Courtesy/By: Nayantara Bhattacharyya
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15 May 2019
