Gurgaon: Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (HRera) has directed a developer to pay 10.8% interest to a homebuyer in Sector 68 for delayed possession. The arrears must be cleared within 90 days.Ocus Skyscrapers Realty has been ordered to pay the interest to Archana Dubey in its commercial project Ocus 24K.Under the buyer’s agreement dated Dec 16, 2013, possession was due within 60 months or by Dec 16, 2018.The occupation certificate was granted on July 17, 2019 and possession was formally offered a day later, on July 18, 2019 — a delay of roughly seven months.However, Rera rejected several of Dubey’s more serious allegations, including claims of fraud in the allotment process and in obtaining statutory clearances.Rera also directed the developer to execute the conveyance deed within three months and barred it from levying any charge outside the scope of the original buyer’s agreement.The order, passed by HRera chairman Arun Kumar on July 17, came on a complaint filed by Dubey, a resident of Sector 46, through her brother and authorised representative Shishir Dubey.Dubey held two commercial units with the developer — G-215 in Ocus Medley (Sector 99) and G-119, measuring 419 sq ft, in Ocus 24K (Sector 68) — and alleged the two had been fraudulently conflated by the builder to divert funds and change her allotment without consent.The authority, however, accepted the developer’s submission that the two units belonged to entirely separate, distinctly registered projects and that the complainant’s claims of a fraudulent unit-swap did not hold up against the documentary record.It also rejected her plea to declare the complaint within limitation on this specific ground, though it proceeded to adjudicate the delayed-possession claim on merits.On the core issue, HRera found the promoter squarely in breach of Section 11(4)(a) of RERA Act for failing to hand over possession by the contractual due date.Applying Section 18(1) read with Rule 15 of HRera Rules, the authority ordered the developer to pay interest at the prescribed rate of 10.8% per annum (SBI’s marginal cost of lending rate plus 2%) on the amount paid by the complainant, calculated from the due date of Dec 16, 2018 till September 18, 2019 — accounting for a further two-month grace period after the offer of possession, as mandated under Section 19(10) of the Act.The authority declined to intervene on the complainant’s allegations that the occupation and completion certificates were fraudulently procured or that the project remains incomplete with construction debris littering the site, holding that these fall outside its jurisdiction and directing her to approach director, town and country planning, or a competent civil court instead.
