In many states and cities of India, large amounts of land is owned by bodies that are run by the Government. As an example, such a body could be the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) that controls huge amount of land in India, or the MHADA (Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority). Complaints about the quality of construction, the timeliness of their deliveries, and whether the whole process has been fair or not have come up again and again, and there have been numerous cases where people have complained and got some kind of relief. For example, in the past DDA has built flats without proper foundations, or built flats with extremely poor quality, in Noida in Uttar Pradesh the whole process of auction of these flats came into dispute because of fears that the process had been tinkered with to favor the few (and this was in a process whereby there was supposed to be an auction that would have avoided such problems). These authorities also don’t have very good complaint handling systems, or systems where they can make the necessary corrections, and people have to face a lot of pain if they had to face some problem.
However, more and more, people are treating these as consumer issues and getting the required rectification done through institutions such as the consumer courts, or through the regular judicial processes, and even though some of these can be slow, they do act and finally some sort of relief is available. For example, in this case, the lady had taken possession of a commercial tenement from the MHADA, but almost since that time, had faced some problem or the other, related to the quality level of the tenement. In their defense, the authority even claimed that the lady was not a consumer, an argument that consumer courts and regular courts are not accepting, and finally they ruled in her favor, stating that the MHADA needed to fix the problems in the tenement, or else pay her compensation. Of course, to be more fair, they should still have paid her compensation for the problems she had faced as well as a penal compensation so that the authority will be more careful next time. (link to article):
A Dongri resident was recently granted relief by the state consumer dispute redressal commission, which directed the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) to repair the space which it provided to the complainant in the year 2000.
The authority has been asked to rectify the defects in the tenement within two months, failing which it will be liable to pay an amount of Rs3 lakhs to the complainant along with an interest rate of nine percent on the amount starting from the year 2001.
Bharti Wani, the complainant, was allotted a commercial tenement through the lottery system for which she paid an amount of Rs7,60,191 to MHADA. However, the minute she took possession of the space allotted, she realised that it was riddled with problems such as leakages, cracks in the ceiling, and unusable shutters. Accordingly, she brought these defects to the notice of the authority, but her efforts were futile. Aggrieved by MHADA’s lack of response, she filed a complaint with the state consumer commission.
