Orissa HC Adjourns Hearing On PIL Against ORERA Forwarding Property Execution Cases To Civil Courts

Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has observed that the Odisha Real Estate Regulatory Authority (ORERA) should not forward property execution cases to the civil courts for initiation of certificate proceedings for the recovery of dues in favour of homebuyers.

A division bench of acting Chief Justice B R Sarangi and Justice M S Raman sought ORERA’s response on revisiting the practice adopted in execution cases after it claimed it was unable to implement its orders. The bench adjourned hearing in the matter to next week.

The observations were made by the HC on Friday while hearing a PIL seeking intervention against ORERA sending its orders imposing penalty to the civil courts for execution. Bimalendu Pradhan, a Bhubaneswar-based flat owner, filed the petition claiming the recovery of penalty has been negligible. This is evident from ORERA’s affidavit, petitioner’s counsel Mohit Agarwal submitted.

ORERA counsel Bibhu Prasad Tripathy had submitted an affidavit in which the authority’s secretary, Bijay Kumar Prusty, indicated that Rs 19.87 crore penalty was imposed in 153 cases, but only Rs 40 lakh has been realised. Steps are being taken to expedite the process of realisation by correspondence with revenue authorities who are provided with power to recover them, the affidavit stated.

On sending the orders to district authorities, ORERA had earlier stated in an affidavit its inability to execute them and that there is no established mechanism like that of the civil courts to recover dues or penalties. While a full-fledged Nizarat with adequate numbers of process servers is necessary, the authority has no Nizarat and process server.

The civil courts are well equipped to enforce an order through the process of its court. Creating parallel infrastructure in ORERA for execution of orders will be an unnecessary burden on the state exchequer.

Hence, it is fully correct and lawful on the part of ORERA to send its orders to the civil court for execution within the local limits of whose jurisdiction the project is located or the person against whom the order is being issued actually resides, ORERA had stated.