Peer Muchalla Flat Maintenance Dues Upheld By Punjab RERA पीर मुछल्ला फ़्लैट का मेंटेनेंस बकाया नियामक ने सही ठहराया ਪੀਰ ਮੁਛੱਲਾ ਫਲੈਟ ਦਾ ਮੇਨਟੇਨੈਂਸ ਬਕਾਇਆ ਰੈਗੂਲੇਟਰ ਨੇ ਸਹੀ ਠਹਿਰਾਇਆ

Two flat owners at Victoria Heights in Peer Muchalla, near Zirakpur, stopped paying their monthly maintenance charges, and the developer took them to the Punjab real estate regulator. In two orders dated the sixth of October twenty twenty six, Punjab's Real Estate Regulatory Authority held that the owners owe the unpaid charges with interest. The same orders also told the developer to charge every flat at one rate and to have its maintenance accounts audited by an outside accountant. It is also to help the residents form an owners' association that can take over the upkeep of the project.

This piece reads the first of those orders in full and the second alongside it, with the sections of the central real estate Act of twenty sixteen that the authority relied on. The developer is named in the orders as Fortune Multitech Private Limited. The owners are not named here.

Who brought the case and why

These are unusual complaints. Most cases before the authority are filed by buyers against builders. Here the developer filed against the owners, under section thirty one of the Act, which allows "any aggrieved person" to complain about a breach of the Act or its rules.

In the first case, the owners signed a buyer's agreement in November twenty seventeen and took possession of their flat in February twenty eighteen. The agreement set a monthly maintenance charge with a yearly increase. The developer said the owners paid until March twenty twenty and nothing after that. It filed its complaint in June twenty twenty one, asking for the dues with interest and a penalty. The second case, filed in February twenty twenty four, concerns another flat in the same project and makes the same claim.

What the owners said in reply

In the first case the owners filed their reply in January twenty twenty six. That was years after they were served, and the order records the delay. Their case was that the developer had broken its own duties first. They said the services were poor and that complaints went unanswered. They also said no separate maintenance agreement had ever been signed, so the developer could not fix or raise the charges on its own. They added that the developer had never shown them audited accounts or tax records for the money it collected.

The owners asked for those accounts to be placed on record. They also asked the authority to order the developer to hand maintenance to an elected residents' body, and to stop any recovery action in the meantime. In the second case the owners did not appear.

Why the dues were upheld

The authority rejected the argument about a missing maintenance agreement. It held that the duty to pay "flows from the Buyers Agreement itself". It also pointed to section nineteen, subsection six, of the Act. That provision makes every allottee responsible for paying, at the proper time, a list of charges that includes "maintenance charges", along with registration charges and municipal taxes. Subsection seven of the same section adds interest for any delay in those payments.

The order also noted that the owners had used the services throughout while paying nothing. It said that an owner who believed the charges were too high was still expected to pay something, because non-payment makes the upkeep of a shared building harder for everyone.

The interest was set at the rate in rule sixteen of the Punjab real estate rules, which is the State Bank of India's highest marginal cost of lending rate plus two percent. The owners have ninety days to pay. After that, the authority's secretary is to send a recovery certificate so the dues can be collected as arrears of land revenue under section forty, subsection one, of the Act. That is the same route buyers use to recover awards from builders.

What the order told the developer to do

The second half of the order runs the other way. The authority found that different residents had been charged different rates, and said maintenance charges are required to be uniform on a reasonable basis. For the period of default it applied one rate per square foot. It directed the developer to set one rate by area for all owners in the project from September twenty twenty six.

The developer had also collected an interest-free maintenance security from most residents. The order directs that this deposit be returned to each owner after any unpaid charges are taken off, and that the interest earned on it be credited to the maintenance account as a contribution from residents. Maintenance money is to go into a separate bank account used only for that purpose.

On accounts, the developer is to have the maintenance books audited by an independent chartered accountant with no earlier link to the project. The accounts are to be open to owners who have paid their dues. Updated vouchers and ledgers are to be kept for each allottee.

The handover to an owners' association

The order finds that the developer "has failed in its duty" to help form an association of apartment owners under the Punjab Apartment Ownership Act, nineteen ninety five. Section eleven, subsection four, of the real estate Act makes a promoter responsible for essential services "on reasonable charges" only until the association of allottees takes over, and requires the promoter to enable that association to be formed. Section nineteen, subsection nine, places a matching duty on each allottee to take part in forming it.

The authority directed the developer to publicise the association to all residents and to email every allottee whose address it holds. It is to work towards enrolling more than half of the owners who hold conveyance deeds, and to ask the competent authority to hold elections. It is also to hand over the service drawings for the building so that a future maintenance agency can work without damaging pipes or wiring. If the association is not running by the thirtieth of June twenty twenty seven, the developer is to appoint an independent maintenance agency with no directors or partners drawn from the developer in the previous three years.

The order adds a general remark. Once a project is complete, it says, maintenance is not the primary work of a promoter, whose role is to build, hand over and move on to its next project.

What the order leaves open

The order relies on an earlier decision of August twenty twenty six in a similar complaint by the same developer in the same project. We have not read that order. Several deadlines in the October directions fall on dates before the order was signed, which suggests they were carried over from August. The order does not say how those dates now apply.

The authority also raised a question it did not answer, which is whether repairs inside a flat are part of the charge or whether the charge covers only common areas such as the roads and parks. It said a basis for that has to be fixed. Under the bye-laws it cited, each owner carries out repairs within his or her own apartment.

The order observes that the project has about four hundred and fifty flats and that most residents pay on time. Either side can appeal to the state's Real Estate Appellate Tribunal. These are orders in two flats' cases in one project, and they settle nothing for other societies around Zirakpur. They do show how this bench reads the duties of an owner who stops paying, and the duties of a developer who keeps running the building.

Related reading

- An earlier Punjab RERA maintenance order against a Mohali flat owner
- Housing societies around Zirakpur and who approves them
- Defects found after possession of a Mohali flat stay the builder's to fix
- A Mohali plot allotment cancelled over dues: what Punjab RERA ordered after the resale

Sources: The sources we use are listed on our Editorial Sources page.

This piece describes two orders of Punjab's Real Estate Regulatory Authority and the sections of the Act they rest on. Nothing here is legal advice, and the position of any other owner or society depends on its own agreement and records.