The Consumer Protection Act and RERA: Concurrent Remedies for the Home Buyer

Two statutes now guard the flat buyer: the general consumer law and the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, built for this one sector. Builders argued for years that the special statute ousted the general one; the Supreme Court answered that the remedies are concurrent, and the allottee elects. This note explains RERA's own machinery, the provisions that keep both doors open, the governing decisions, and how the election works in practice.

1. RERA's Machinery in Outline

Registration and discipline: projects and agents must register with the State's Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Section 3), with promoter disclosures, the seventy-per-cent escrow discipline on project receivables, and sanctioned-plan and carpet-area honesty as statutory duties.
The allottee's charter (Section 18): on failure to complete or deliver by the agreement's date, the allottee may withdraw, with refund, interest at the prescribed rate and compensation, or stay in, with interest for every month of delay; structural and workmanship defects notified within five years of possession must be rectified without further charge.
Adjudication: complaints to the Authority (Section 31), interest and refund directions through it, compensation assessed by the adjudicating officer (Section 71), and appeals to the Real Estate Appellate Tribunal, with execution through the Authority's recovery machinery.
The jurisdictional clauses: Section 79 bars civil courts from entertaining matters the Authority or Tribunal is empowered to determine; Section 88 declares the Act's provisions in addition to, and not in derogation of, any other law; Section 89 gives RERA overriding effect in case of inconsistency.

2. The Concurrence Settled

📖 Imperia Structures Ltd. v. Anil Patni, (2020) 10 SCC 783

Held: An allottee may pursue a complaint under the Consumer Protection Act notwithstanding RERA. Section 79 bars civil courts, and the Consumer Commissions are not civil courts; Section 88 keeps RERA's remedies additional; and Section 18 itself grants the allottee's rights 'without prejudice to any other remedy available'. The consumer complaint for refund with interest was maintainable, and registration of the project under RERA made no difference.

📖 Experion Developers Pvt. Ltd. v. Sushma Ashok Shiroor, (2022) SCC OnLine SC 416

Held: The Consumer Protection Act and RERA operate concurrently: neither statute's remedy is exclusive, and it is the allottee's choice which to invoke. The Commissions' power to direct refund with interest for delayed possession stands on the consumer statute's own footing, and interest that compensates both the deprivation of money and the agony of delay is within it.

The reasoning travels beyond its facts: consumer jurisdiction survives sectoral statutes with bar clauses wherever the bar is addressed to civil courts and the sectoral remedy is declared additional, the pattern Section 100 of the 2019 Act mirrors from its own side. The earlier builder-side arguments from Section 89's overriding effect failed for want of any real inconsistency: two concurrent remedial doors are not in conflict merely because both open.

3. Working the Election

One relief, once: concurrence is of remedies, not recoveries: the allottee who has executed a refund decree in one forum cannot recover it again in the other, and pursuing identical reliefs in parallel invites dismissal of the later or abuse-of-process findings; the clean practice is to choose, and to disclose any other proceeding in the pleading.
What each door offers: RERA, the prescribed interest rate, the regulator's leverage over a live project (registration, escrow, compliance directions), the five-year defect liability, and territorial focus in the project's State; the Commission, moulded refund-or-possession decrees with compensation, the unfair-contract jurisdiction over one-sided agreements, class complaints for a project's buyers, filing where the complainant resides, and Section 72's imprisonment behind the decree.
Pending and transferred matters: complaints instituted before RERA's commencement, and those filed since, continue before the Commissions (Imperia Structures); there is no automatic transfer to the Authority, and limitation under each statute runs on its own terms.
Where RERA does not reach: unregistered and exempt projects, pre-RERA causes of action, and claims against actors outside the promoter definition still find the consumer forum open, the general statute as the safety net under the special one.

⚠ Key point

RERA gives the allottee a dedicated regulator and the Section 18 charter; the Consumer Act gives the deficiency, unfair-contract and class machinery. Imperia Structures (Section 79 bars civil courts, not Commissions; Section 88 keeps remedies additional) and Experion (concurrent regimes, the allottee's choice) settle that both doors stand open, for registered projects included, subject to one discipline: the same relief is recovered only once, so the buyer elects the forum whose strengths his case needs.

The concurrence is, in the end, the Act's own philosophy applied to its strongest sectoral rival: special machinery adds protection, and the consumer keeps the choice the general statute gave him.

4. Related Topics and Provisions

Housing and real estate under the Act (Topic 97): the builder-buyer docket
Unfair contract (Topics 18 and 60): the Commissions' edge over printed terms
Who can file (Topic 43): class complaints for a project's buyers
Special categories overview (Topic 93): the sector map