Expert articles on DPDP compliance, IP law, cyber law, and legal advisory for Indian businesses
Many Gurugram societies are still run by the builder long after possession — common areas, accounts and the maintenance corpus never handed to the residents. The law requires that handover, and it can be enforced.
Steep maintenance with no audited accounts, run by a captive facility-management company, and hiked without consultation? Residents are entitled to transparent maintenance and, ultimately, to control it themselves.
The Interest-Free Maintenance Security and the sinking fund you paid belong to the residents. On handover, a builder must account for and transfer them to the association — not keep them.
Fines for drying clothes on the balcony, late payment, or minor 'violations'? An RWA is not a municipality or a court — penalties it invents, with no basis in validly adopted rules, are generally unenforceable.
Blanket 'no pets' rules, bans on pets in lifts or parks, fines and harassment of pet owners — animal-welfare guidelines and the courts have repeatedly held these illegal. An RWA can make reasonable conduct rules, not prohibitions.
Feeding community dogs is recognised in law, and strays cannot be removed or harmed — but it must be organised sensibly, with sterilisation, vaccination and designated feeding points.
Flats turned into paying-guest accommodations, guest houses, offices or shops — without a change of land use or licence — are a town-planning violation. Residents and the RWA can complain to the authorities.
Open and stilt parking in a group-housing society are common areas — they belong to all owners and generally cannot be 'sold' or charged for arbitrarily by an RWA or builder. The RWA can regulate parking fairly, not profiteer from it.
An RWA cannot refuse homes to tenants, impose blanket bans on bachelors, or discriminate by religion, region or food habits. Such rules are illegal and unenforceable, and coercion can be a police matter.