Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has upheld a builder’s decision to cancel the allotment of an Airoli flat after the prospective buyer failed to pay stamp duty and registration charges needed to complete the sale deed. Justice Sandeep Marne set aside orders passed by MahaRERA and its Appellate Tribunal directing JP Builders and Developers to complete the transaction and hand over the flat to buyer Santosh Sandhu.
The court found that Sandhu had not actually paid the stamp duty and registration charges to the authorities, despite claiming that he had deposited the money with a bank. The flat was originally booked by Nagendra Khartmol, who later transferred the allotment to Sandhu. The MahaRERA Appellate Tribunal later upheld the order and also awarded interest on the amount paid by Sandhu. The builder then approached the high court through advocate Rajesh Vanzara. Justice Marne found that the documents did not support Sandhu’s claim that he had actually paid the statutory charges. The court noted that Sandhu was apparently unaware that an e-challan had to be generated after payment and submitted for registration of the agreement. The court also found that when Sandhu approached the PNB branch to make the payment, the bank had already stopped the relevant service. The court noted that had the charges been paid, specific challans would have been generated and would have been required to be attached to the agreement for sale at the time of execution and registration.
The amount was eventually returned to his account in January 2020 at his request. Because of financial difficulties, the builder had cancelled the transaction on July 30, 2019, after Sandhu said he was unable to pay the charges. Because sandhu had not made the payments required for registration, the builder told the court that it was ready to execute the agreement for sale, but could not proceed.
The court therefore held that the builder was “clearly justified in terminating the transaction” and set aside the orders of MahaRERA and the Appellate Tribunal.
