Justice Darshan Singh to head real estate tribunal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 28

Builders and promoters of the realty projects, aggrieved by the decisions of the two Benches of the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority (HRERA), have finally got an institutional mechanism for redressal of their grievances.

The state government has constituted the Haryana Real Estate Appellate Tribunal with Justice Darshan Singh, a former Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, as chairman to hear complaints against the decisions of the Gurugram and Panchkula Benches of HRERA. The Tribunal would be set up at Karnal.

To be constituted under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, the proceedings before the Tribunal would be judicial under the Indian Penal Code and it would exercise the power of a civil court.

Currently, there is no grievance redressal mechanism against the decisions of the two HRERA Benches functioning at Panchkula and Gurugram. The Panchkula Bench, headed by former IAS officer Rajan Gupta, has jurisdiction over rest of the Haryana except Gurugram. The Gurugram Bench has jurisdiction over Gurugram and is currently headed by another bureaucrat KK Khandelwal.

Justice Darshan Singh, who convicted “Supercop” and Punjab’s former DGP KPS Gill in a case of outraging the modesty of a senior IAS officer, recently headed a commission of inquiry on an objectionable question on the Brahmin community in the Junior Engineer (JE) examination conducted by the Haryana State Selection Commission (HSSC).

In 1996, Justice Darshan Singh, then Chief Judicial Magistrate posted in Chandigarh, had convicted KPS Gill in a molestation case involving IAS officer Rupan Deol Bajaj and sentenced him to three-month imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 700.