The Hindu : New Delhi News : Few GPA apartment owners benefiting from new rules, Act

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Saturday, Jan 05, 2008
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New Delhi

Few GPA apartment owners benefiting from new rules, Act

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

NEW DELHI: Though the Delhi Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Act, 2006, came into force from January 13, 2007, and DCS Rules, 2007, from October 19, most of the 15 lakh general power of attorney (GPA) holders or people who had purchased their apartments on the basis of a GPA have still not been able to get full membership rights for their properties.

“Vested interests”

The Delhi Residents’ Front, which has been fighting for the rights of GPAs, has charged that this is primarily because the “two different entities have been created to confuse GPAs, to entangle them in future liabilities, to protect the vested interests of nexus of all those associated with the cooperative societies in a big way.” Elaborating on the issue, Front president Sanjiv Kumar said it is the flaws in the various clauses which render the whole gamut of the membership issue wide open for debate and called for an urgent need to amend the rules. He cautioned that GPAs opting for a membership of cooperative group housing societies presently run the risk of inviting several liabilities upon themselves. In many societies, the allottees have taken loans for financing of their flats. In spite of repayment of the entire loan and interest to the society by the allottee or the purchaser of the flat in case of a GPA holder, if the same has not been deposited further by the society to the financial institution then the management committee can as per the rules again treat the GPA as defaulter for no fault of his, he said. Then where societies are involved in legal battles with builders or contractors and a massive amount is involved in the litigation, in the event of a judgment in favour of the builder, contractor, the hapless new members are required to share full liability towards payment of amount that might fall on the society.

Also, some societies have a liability towards composition fee and ground rent raised previously by DDA and even if this amount had been paid by original members or GPAs in the society office, if the management committee had failed to clear the liability of the DDA due to various reasons, then the liability may again fall on the hapless new member.

The share money belonging to original allottees has also been lying in various CGHSs in the form of share capital. But as per Rule 92 sub-rule 2 of DCS Rules, 2007, the transferee is required to submit an affidavit in Form 21 to undertake to share liability of the original member in respect of past and present dues towards the Society and to indemnify the Society from any claim on account of original share certificate or any other document of the original member.

Question marks

Questioning the rationale behind such rules, Mr. Kumar said; “How can the transferee indemnify the society from any claim, which may arise due to the documents if they are claimable by a third person (transferor)? This share money which is a part of authorised share capital should have been transferred (on paper only) in the name of the GPA in the event of him or her opting for membership but people are being forced to shell out further amount towards share money as per the provision of the DCS (Amendment) Act, 2006, and this is an anomaly created by the Act.”

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