A conciliation bench is necessary to swiftly settle complaints: The chairman of Haryana RERA

GURUGRAM: On his first day of work, Arun Kumar, the new chief of the city bench of the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (H-Rera), gave senior officials instructions to address allottee concerns within the allotted time frame.

“To help both parties — the developer and the allottees — a conciliation bench should be set up to resolve grievances at an early stage,” he stated on Thursday. Generally speaking, complaints have a 60-day window.

Kumar, an IAS officer from the 1989 Haryana cadre who retired earlier this year, has been the second chairman of Gurgaon H-Rera, for a five-year term.

The new chief believes that in addition to assisting in the peaceful settlement of conflicts that would otherwise result in drawn-out court fights, the conciliation bench will expedite the resolution process and eliminate a significant backlog of cases.

If the conciliation bench is established, it will not only prevent more strain on H-Rera but also on civil courts that are currently overburdened with cases. It will allow the involved parties to settle outside of the official H-Rera proceedings.

Kumar met in his office on Thursday for the first time with junior employees and senior H-Rrera personnel. “The authority’s primary goal is to address the grievances raised by the allottees. The complainant’s case must be decided by H-Rera within the allotted time frame, he continued.

He went on to say that to improve the effectiveness and transparency of its operations, the authority must engage the public through awareness campaigns and other initiatives.

Under the direction of KK Khandelwal, who retired in February of this year, H-Rera Gurgaon was established on February 5, 2018.

During his term, Khandelwal also proposed the creation of a mediation forum and assembled a group of mediators with experience in resolving real estate conflicts.

The cases that the regulator thought about submitting to the forum included those that were referred to the H-Rera adjudicating officer and those where mediation petitions were submitted before the filing of a formal complaint.

In October of this year, the Union home ministry named Arun Kumar, who was previously the director general of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), as the chief commissioner of the Chandigarh Right to Service Commission. He has also held the position of deputy commissioner at Chandigarh, Palwal, and Faridabad.

Kumar served for more than thirty years and has a lengthy history with the Ministry of civil aviation. To relieve traffic at Delhi’s IGI airport, he planned and constructed micro-airports across the nation, including one in Hisar, Haryana, which is regarded as a significant accomplishment.