RERA Orders Not Decrees, Cannot Be Executed Through Civil Courts: Karnataka High Court

The Karnataka High Court has recently ruled that an order passed by a Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) does not amount to a civil court decree and cannot be executed through civil execution proceedings, holding that RERA orders must be enforced only through the statutory recovery mechanism provided under the Act.

A single bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna said the statutory scheme shows that RERA is a 'self-contained code' whose decisions do not conform to any of the requirements of a decree as defined in Section 2(2) CPC, and therefore its orders cannot be executed as civil decrees.

The court added that enforcement of its orders must follow the route of recovery as laid in the RERA Act, that is the  jurisdictional Revenue Authority ordinarily, via the Tahsildar. It also relied on High Court rulings from Allahabad, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Calcutta, all of which have held that orders of administrative tribunals cannot be treated as civil court decrees.

"On a coalesce of the judgments noted above, what would unmistakably emerge is, the order of the Adjudicating Officer or the order of the Appellate Tribunal, constituted under the Act, does not assume the mantle of a decree, within the contemplation of Section 2(2) of the CPC. Therefore, such an order/orders cannot traverse the path of execution delineated under Order XXI of the CPC. The Courts have, in the afore-quoted judgments have illuminated that the proceedings before the RERA are not conceived in the mould of a civil suit, though the Act provides the procedure to be followed, as if it is a civil Court and therefore, cannot culminate in a decree in the classical sense. In that light, the applications so filed by the petitioner invoking Section 47 of the CPC to hold that the concerned Executing Court did not have jurisdiction was in tune with law."

The case stemmed from execution petitions filed by a group of homebuyers before the Additional City Civil and Sessions Court in Bengaluru to enforce RERA orders passed in June and August 2023. Mantri Developers, the builder, objected to the maintainability of the execution petitions, arguing that only RERA's statutory recovery route could be used. When the civil court rejected these objections, the builder approached the High Court.

The counsel appearing for the developer, argued that homebuyers have no authority to seek execution before a civil court, as RERA provides a complete mechanism for recovery of land revenue arrears. He submitted that a RERA order is not a decree since RERA is not a civil court and its proceedings do not originate from a suit. Counsel for the homebuyers contended that the law permitted execution through a civil court because the buyers were only seeking the benefit granted to them under the RERA orders.

Primarily relying on Allahabad High Court order in Supertech Ltd(2018) which held that orders passed by RERA and the Appellate Tribunal do not conform to any of the requirements of a decree as defined in Section 2(2) CPC, the court quashed the execution proceedings pending before the Bengaluru court.