News: Conciliation bench a must to resolve complaints quickly: Haryana RERA chairman-15-12-2023
Arun Kumar, the new chief of the city bench of the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (H-Rera), on his first day in office directed senior officials to resolve complaints of allottees within the stipulated time limit.
“For this, a conciliation bench should be set up to resolve complaints at an early stage, which would help both parties — the allottees as well as the developer,” he said on Thursday. The time limit for complaints is generally 60 days.
Kumar, a 1989-batch Haryana cadre IAS officer who retired earlier this year, has joined Gurgaon H-Rera as its second chairman for a five-year term.
The new chief believes the conciliation bench will speed up the resolution process — and clear a large number of pending cases as a result — apart from helping find solutions amicably in disputes that could otherwise become long-winded legal battles in courts.
The conciliation bench, if set up, will not only check increased pressure on H-Rera, but also on civil courts that are already dealing with a backlog of cases. It will provide the parties concerned an option for a settlement outside the formal proceedings of H-Rera.
On Thursday, Kumar held his first meeting with senior H-Rrera officers and junior staff in his office. “The main objective of the authority is to redress the complaints of the allottees. H-Rera’s mandate is to take a decision on the complainant’s case within the prescribed time limit,” he added.
He further said the authority needs to reach out to the people through awareness campaigns and other means to make its functioning more efficient and transparentH-Rera Gurgaon came into existence on February 5, 2018 under the chairmanship of KK Khandelwal, who retired in February this year.
Khandelwal too had suggested a mediation forum during his tenure and constituted a panel of mediators skilled in real estate dispute resolutions.
Cases that the regulator considered referring to the forum were those where applications were made for mediation before a formal complaint was filed, as well as those referred to the adjudicating officer of H-Rera.
Arun Kumar, formerly the director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), was appointed the chief commissioner of the Chandigarh Right to Service Commission by the Union home ministry in October this year. He has also been the deputy commissioner of Faridabad, Palwal and Chandigarh.
During a service tenure of over three decades, Kumar had a long association with the civil aviation ministry. He envisioned the need for a hangar to decongest Delhi’s IGI airport by building micro airports in small cities and towns in the country as well as planning one in Hisar, Haryana, considered a major achievement.
