We have a terrace flat in a mumbai suburban society, the building was constructed in 1979 & we are the second owner of the house. Now the building is about to be redeveloped and we would like to know what are our rights in such a case. The developer has agreed to give us an additional 72 sq. ft. of area in lieu of our ~219 sq. ft. terrace post redevelopment. The society had unanimously & positively signed the Development Agreement on stamp paper with the said developer in 2009, in which our extra area was mentioned by the developer. The developer had also paid Rs. ~26,00,000 as a part of the corpus amount to the society for redevelopment in 2009. The agreement has not been registered by a registrar. The society got a revised agreement from the developer recently, August 2013, and the clause that mentions additional space to us still remains a part of the revised agreement. This revised agreement is yet to be executed.
The terrace is besides our house on the Ground+4th floor and the only entrance to it is through our house. It shares a common wall with the terrace of the B-wing (B-wing only has Ground+3 floors), but our terrace wholly resides in A-wing. There is another larger terrace above our floor which is accessible to everybody & where the water tank is placed. Society had lawfully transferred the flat to us in 2003 and our agreement with the previous owner clearly mentioned the open terrace in the sale deed and no objection was taken by the society then. Also, since buying the house, in 2005, we were permitted by the society to put up a small roof on our terrace, indicating the society accepted us as the rightful owner of the said terrace.
Recently the society has started to demand money from us for the terrace, stating that we are getting additional area for free and should pay them for their co-operation. We are not willing to pay to the society an exorbitant amount of 7 Lakh Rupees as demanded, they also falsely alleged that we had agreed to compensate for the additional area at market rate to the society. We have never made any such commitment, we also have copies of the minutes of the meetings and no such incidence has been mentioned. On denial the society is threatening to demolish the terrace and also persuade the developer to not give us the additional area. We have already paid a premium to the previous owner for the terrace when we bought the house in 2003, and also on the society’s demand gave the society an extra donation of Rs.5000 for the same at the time of buying.
We have been harassed a lot since the last one year by the society on this matter. Society had demanded that we pay the maintenance for the terrace, to which we agreed & offered the same in 2009, later they refused to accept the amount. And recently they brought up the same point of maintenance charges in one of the meetings to harass us, following which we have directly transferred the sum to the society’s bank account.
One of the committee members even made a physical attack on me without any provocation during one of the meetings. A police complaint for the same has been made by me. Society also falsely accused me, the treasurer, of not transferring the corpus to a fixed deposit, and asked me to compensate the society for the loss of interest (Rs. ~3,33,000), again attempting to extort. No resolution was passed, until then, by the society with respect to the fixed deposit and as the treasurer I do not have the sole authority to make any transfer. A resolution was passed in April 2012 and the fixed deposit was made in the month of May, 2012. All these instances indicate that society wants to extort money from us in any way they possibly can.
Can the society turn back on the agreement they signed? Can the developer do so if the society pressurizes him? Can the society demolish the terrace after we have occupied it for 10 years? Does the society have a right to ask for money in such a way? We think it is attempt of extortion. If we do agree to pay, how can it be done so as to avoid such extortion again in the future? We believe even if we pay today, the society will come back to us asking for more money tomorrow. Please suggest the legal way out for us? What steps should we take?
