RERA has called for tenders to appoint a consultancy to identify ongoing and new real estate projects which haven’t registered with the authority. RERA, which said it’s a pilot project, had received three applications as of Wednesday, the last day to submit bids. “We are planning to execute the project on a trial basis for a month,” said P Sunil Kumar, secretary, RERA.
The Rs 5 lakh project will see a private individual or company conducting a ground-level survey to identify unregistered projects and submit a comprehensive report to RERA. K G Satyanarayana, assistant executive engineer of RERA who’s also in charge of the outsourced project, said individuals or companies well-versed with total station surveys are eligible for bidding. A total station survey is a technical process to survey a land parcel on the basis of its latitude and longitude, using advanced GIS technology.
Kumar said RERA was using the plan sanction certificates issued by BBMP as preliminary information and was planning to send the surveyor to the address for physical verification. “We will scale up the project with more effective tools and expand it to the rest of Karnataka gradually,” said Kumar.
RERA estimates there are 1,294 unregistered projects across the state, of which over 800 are in and around Bengaluru. Officials said the numbers could be much higher considering that projects are mushrooming. The authority, so far, depended on newspaper reports and advertisements, websites, complaints from buyers and official records of urban local bodies to identify unregistered projects. Since these were inadequate, it is now embarking on a physical survey.
What about pending applications, ask builders
Some builders have questioned RERA’s enthusiasm to identify unregistered projects at a time when the authority has allegedly been slow in dealing with registration applications. “RERA is keen on finding unregistered projects, and we appreciate the decision. But the question is, why is the authority dithering on pending applications? If they are really sincere, they must provide registration quickly to those who seek it, instead of delaying the process inordinately,” said M B Adinarayana, a builder who has been waiting for more than a month after applying for registration of an upcoming project in Vijayanagar.
