Mumbai: Granting relief to residents of a housing society in Ghatkopar East, the Bombay High Court recently ruled that failure to produce a property card cannot deny flat purchasers their right to obtain conveyance. This, the court said, would defeat the purpose of the Maharashtra Ownership of Flats Act (MOFA), a law that protects flat purchasers from indefinite postponement of conveyance.
A property card is an official document detailing a property’s location, boundaries, ownership history and transaction records while a conveyance deed formally transfers ownership and land title from a seller to a buyer, serving as crucial evidence of ownership.
The Ghatkopar Chandrodaya Cooperative Housing Society (GCCHS) had moved the high court challenging an order of the Competent Authority and District Deputy Registrar (II) who had, on February 5, 2024, rejected the housing society’s application for deemed conveyance.
The flat purchasers had formed a society that was registered in 1997. The competent authority had rejected their application for deemed conveyance on three grounds, one of which was an invalid property card.
Justice Amit Borkar observed: “It must be understood that failure to produce a revenue document such as a property card cannot take away the substantive statutory right of flat purchasers to obtain conveyance.”
In his order dated January 30, the single-judge said that the entire purpose of MOFA would be defeated if the flat purchaser’s right to conveyance was denied “merely because a revenue document was not perfectly attached at the first instance”.
The competent authority’s decision to reject GCCHS’s conveyance application on this ground “shows non-application of mind and cannot stand in law”, the judge said.
The GCCHS’s lawyer said that under the Act, the promoter was dutybound to execute the conveyance in favour of the society within four months from its registration but the legal heirs of the former promoter had avoided the execution of the conveyance despite the society being registered in 1997. He said that the society had annexed the property card available on the government website and was not aware of any other property card.
The 955 sq m plot on which the society is located included two buildings of four floors that formed the GCCHS and and a three-floored building that was the Old Chandrodaya. The promoters of Old Chandrodaya had resisted the grant of conveyance in favour of GCCHS.
The court said that both buildings form part of the same layout and that the promoter treated the entire land as a single development plot. Flat purchasers do not purchase only the built up area, they also purchase an undivided interest in the land on which the building stands, the court noted.
“If the promoter wanted to permanently exclude the land under the old building from conveyance, the agreement needed clear language to that effect. There is no such language,” Justice Borkar said.
The court said that the survey numbers, CTS numbers, measurements, and location were consistent across documents placed on the record.
“In such a situation, treating a property card annexed by the society as incorrect and using that as the sole basis for rejection is unjustified,” the court observed.