The Supreme Court Tuesday junked the West Bengal Housing Industry Regulation Act (WB-HIRA), 2017, calling it unconstitutional.
A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and M R Shah said, “The state law fits, virtually on all fours, with the footprints of the law with the footprints of the law enacted by the Parliament. This is constitutionally impermissible. What the West Bengal legislature has attempted to achieve is to set up its parallel legislation involving a parallel regime.”
The Court also said that many provisions of the WB-HIRA were directly in conflict with the central legislation, RERA.
RERA, as it is called, (The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016) “is an Act of the Parliament of India which seeks to protect home-buyers as well as help boost investments in the real estate industry. The Act came into force from 1 May 2016.”
Commenting on the West Bengal law, the Court said, “WB-HIRA has failed to incorporate valuable institutional safeguards and provisions intended to protect the interest of homebuyers. The silence of the state legislature in critical areas indicates that important safeguards which have been enacted by the Parliament in the public interest have been omitted in the state enactment.”
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