Developers urge govt to review construction ban, exempt RERA projects

Real estate developers have urged the central government to consider RERA registered projects as public interest ventures and allow work to continue even when pollution levels increase. A delegation of developers met with the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, and argued that construction and demolition activities have already been banned for 29 days this winter. They highlighted that construction activity once stopped, it takes more than 15 to 30 days to resume full-fledged operations, hence construction is banned for just two and a half months. Developers also pointed out that the first impact of this ban directly hit labourers working on construction sites and it leads to a huge loss to real estate companies, labourers, vendors, ancillary industries, and government revenue. They urged the minister to allow activities that do not cause pollution and also to declare in advance that during this part of the year, no construction will be allowed in the National Capital Region (NCR) to avoid negative impact on sectors and government revenue. The industry body said that the vendors and ancillary industries which are selling construction materials such as steel, paint, plywood, cement cannot sell during the ban, and this leads to loss of GST for the government.