PANAJI
Non-resident Indians and foreign nationals holding Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards who purchased apartments (flats) in Goa in the 2013-18 five-year period are caught in a bind: they are unable to sell as officials are refusing to endorse the deals citing the lack of an NOC from the Debt Management Unit (DMU) Committee set up by the State government on the prompting of the Reserve Bank of India.
Sub-registrars are refusing to register second sales of such apartments pointing out the lacunae that at the time of their purchase, although the incumbent then, had endorsed the deal between the real estate developer and the NRI buyers without the NOC from the DMU panel.
One such Goan native, now a Singaporean National, stuck with an apartment flat he purchased in 2015 from prominent Goan real estate company Models Construction, has now knocked the doors of Law Minister Aleixo Sequeira, seeking a solution to his predicament.
Elston Soares, a journalist formerly in Goa but now a Singaporean national based there, has requested Sequeira to use his offices to find a resolution to his predicament after he got stuck in the bureaucratic red-tape of the process to register the sale of his flat to a buyer he found,
"I have been trying to sell my apartment in Taleigao, Goa for the past few months. I have found a buyer for my apartment. Still, I cannot sell it as the Sub-Registrar has declined to register the deal, saying the then Sub-Registrar improperly registered my purchase of the apartment from Models Developer in 2015," Soares wrote in his letter to Sequeira.
According to Soares, the Tiswadi sub-registrar Rishwa Prabhu contends that apartments in Goa bought or sold by OCIs/NRIs between 2013 and 2018 needed a NOC from the DMU, or Debt Management Committee, set up by the State government under guidance from the Reserve Bank of India.
"I bought my apartment in 2015, so according to the law in force, I would have been required to get this NOC," he wrote to Sequeira, adding that he was unaware of this provision then.
"More significantly, this NOC requirement was not brought to my attention by either the developer Models or the sub-registrar at that time who registered the purchase without this document," Soares writes, adding that he had clearly declared his OCI status at the time of the flat purchase in 2015.
Soares said, the State government dissolved the DMU committee in 2018 but the order does not provide for those like him whose sale deeds were registered by sub-registrars without this NOC.
