Law to give saleable right over building and land to flat owners on cards
SHWETA KAMAT
PANJIM: Several housing cooperative societies have no saleable right to their dwellings or proportionate share of land on which the building is constructed as the builder refuses to transfer the rights. This had created problems for more than 15,000 families and some 1,900 registered housing cooperative societies in the State who cannot sell or transfer in another person’s name.
The Ministry of Cooperation has now planned a major amendment to Goa Cooperative Society’s Act giving a saleable right over the building and land to the flat owners.
The amendment to Goa Cooperative Society’s Act will now change the law wherein a flat owner having occupancy for more than three years and builder has not transferred it in his/her name, the flat owner will get the ownership rights, automatically.
Cooperation Minister Deepak Dhavalikar said that the amendment to the Act would be passed in the Cabinet this month, which will give relief to 1,900 housing cooperative societies registered with the government and an equal number of others who are not registered.
Dhavalikar said that the builders never transferred the land and building to the persons who purchased the flat after signing the sale deeds.
“Once the project is sold out, the builder was not bothered about the structure and would ignore the flat owners. Then problems would arise when the flat was to be sold to another person,” he said.
Housing co-operatives were a relatively new concept in Goa having first come up only in the late 1990’s. The State government has recently appointed a task force committee of four members to study the health of all housing co-operatives and is also in the process of introducing the Flat Owners Act, in the interest of the middle-income households as soon as possible.
