Governance – Page 27 – FindMyProperty

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) took the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to task over its recent notification excepting real estate projects from obtaining prior environmental clearance and reserved it from permitting any fresh permission under new regulations.

On December 9, the Environment Ministry published a notice which exempted building and construction real estate projects covering on an area of 20,000 square metres to 1, 50,000 square metres from getting environment clearance.
The green panel had earlier declined to stay the December 9 notification by MoEF and issued notices to the ministries of Environment and Forests and Urban Development while seeking their reply before January 4, 2017.

The panel order came in reply to a request filed by an NGO, the Society for Protection of Environment and Biodiversity, seeking overwhelming of the notification on the grounds that it was in violation to the provisions of the environment impact assessment notification, 2006 and Environment Protection Act, 1986.
“Until further order the notification will not be implemented…. If you grant even one clearance under the new notification we will stay the notification,” Justice Swatanter Kumar, NGT Chairperson said.

The request opposed that the purpose of including the construction projects in the EIA notification is a failure of the urban local bodies and development authorities.The matter is now listed for next hearing on January 12.

RERA (Real Estate Regulation and Development Act) is likely to pre-launch stage will be abolished and a project can be launched only after obtaining all approvals. Real Estate Developers are expected to move a build and sell model instead of selling residential projects before construction even begins.

RERA Act will not allow developers to test the markets by going for pre-launch sales. They would prefer to rather build a part of the project and then sell it to buyers.

With the rising preference, ready properties sale of which have risen significantly in the past year, compared with under construction projects. Customers progressively choose to buy complete project due to increasing uncertainly in the real estate market. In this way, RERA will remove the pre-launch stage and force developers to launch a project under the new guidelines only once all approvals are in place. This is believed to be a safer approach since cash outflows will be limited during the pre-constructions stage. This will help maintain fixed funds for timely completions of the project.

The developer plans to adopt this model in the two or three projects it has lined up for launch in the near future. For the buyer it gives him the comfort that the project will be completed in time.