Gujarat co-operative society’s residents can now apply for redevelopment.

Residential buildings incorporated under the 1962 Gujarat Co-Operative Societies Act and intending to conduct redevelopment can now apply to the Paldi Co-operative Registrar, according to an urban development department notification.

There are 6,714 housing societies established under the GCS Act of 1962 in Ahmedabad and over the last three months, several of this demonstrated an unwillingness to apply for ‘redevelopment’ of their old buildings as a parallel registration was not rendered in compliance with the GCS Act, 1962 granting power to the registrar of cooperatives in each district to accept reconstruction requests for housing cooperatives.

The State Department of Urban Development has now explained that Section 19(1) and (2) of the 2019 Gujarat Rules on Flat Ownership (Amendment) also applies to housing cooperatives. The section explicitly states, “With respect to undertaking the redevelopment of the building for the purposes set out in sections, the management committee or the entity of a cooperative society or organization under whatever form it is named that manages the affairs of the building, either suo moto or on an application obtained from one-fourth representatives of the flats or the residences, as the case may be.”

A senior official of the State Department of Agriculture and Cooperation said that after the change was introduced to the 1974 Gujarat Ownership of Flats Rules, which falls under the state urban development department, the Co-operative Registrar in several districts, including Ahmedabad, had declined to rebuild the co-operative housing societies that requested for it. “In the upcoming weeks a new notification from the department of cooperatives would enable the redevelopment of apartments listed under the GCS Act,” the official said.

The latest amendment demands that a special general meeting of the cooperative society or association be held by the management committee within a span of one month from the date of the submission for ‘intent for redevelopment’ until the registrar decides on the redevelopment of the building.