Interplay between the “Consumer Protection Act” & the “Real Estate Regulatory Authority Act”​​

Mukul Chhikara​
Amity Law school, Noida, India.

Volume IV, Issue I, 2021

“Consumer protection Act, 2019” is a legislation which protects the consumer’s interests and is consists of group of laws which was designed to ensure consumers rights. The main objective or the purpose of this law is to provide all-round and a better protection and safeguarding their rights and ensures speedy redressal of their grievances.

“The Real Estate regulatory authority Act, 2016” is legislation which supervises all the activities carried out or in by the real estate sector which was framed to take out the transparency in the sector of real estate and to regulate all the activities under it with a strict hand.

This paper focuses on the areas and the changes which has taken place after the enactment of “the Real estate regulatory authority Act, 2016” secondly, it studies as to what extent does the newly enacted law has reduce the scope of the consumer protection Act, 2019 Thirdly, it addresses the question whether RERA is actually a better forum than the consumer forum which is common for all types of consumers?

Earlier, Real estate was largely an unregulated sector where investors or homebuyers Used to pool or invest their money but due to the lack of unbound laws these innocent buyers or investors were fooled by the builders, delay in possession was the common issue and due to lack of laws or any legal protection which was hardly there in order to protect the homebuyers who had to visit cumbersome civil courts for redressal of their grievances which takes heavy expenses and time. Therefore, “the consumer protection act” was enacted and came into existence which provided them with some relief but was not time bound, inexpensive and speedy nor it was in specific for the sector of real estate.

Therefore, in order to avoid all these unfair and expensive legislation there came a complete change in the scenario, the government came with a new legislation and enacted “Real estate regulatory authority act, 2016” which was strongly in favor of homebuyers and to provide them with inexpensive and a speedy justice.

Pursuant to this new legislation, a new issue came up i.e. which was the correct forum for the homebuyers to approach – “RERA” or “Consumer Court”. Therefore, this paper addresses this question and seeks to state the inter-relationship between the two Acts.

DOI: http://doi.one/10.1732/IJLMH.25602