“Thus, mere delay does not defeat the right of a housing society to secure title in the land,” the Bombay High Court has said while reviving a deemed conveyance claim despite a 10-year delay in challenging the society’s 2016 rejection. The society gets a fresh hearing, but only for its proportionate land share, which the competent authority must now calculate afresh.
Mumbai: A housing society that waited a decade to contest the rejection of its deemed conveyance application has been given another chance by the Bombay High Court. The Court set aside the order of rejection and sent the matter back for fresh adjudication in a petition by Sterling Apartment Co-operative Housing Society, holding that the delay should not shut out its statutory remedy on the facts of the case.
Justice Sandeep V. Marne delivered the judgment on November 5, 2026 in Sterling Apartment Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. v. The Competent Authority and District Deputy Registrar, Co-operative Societies, Mumbai City (3) and Others.
A share of the land, not the whole plot
The society did not win ownership of the entire plot. The Court limited its entitlement to a proportionate share, to be worked out from the built-up area figures discussed in the judgment, and the other owners keep their corresponding share.
On the merits, the Court looked at municipal file records only to identify those built-up area figures. The society must place an architect’s certificate before the competent authority setting out its exact entitlement on the basis the Court directed.
The parties must appear before the authority on November 19, 2026 to seek hearing dates, and the remanded proceedings should be decided expeditiously, preferably within four months. A request to stay the judgment for eight weeks was rejected. The judgment records that the building has no occupancy certificate; its directions concern deemed conveyance and land division and do not regularise the construction or grant an occupancy certificate.
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The 2016 rejection and a second application
The society’s building in Kolekalyan, Mumbai, has 38 flats and seven shops. Members bought their units under agreements governed by the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act, 1963 (MOFA), and the society was registered in February 1994. Eleven other structures stood on the land, and several persons claimed ownership interests.
On March 28, 2016, the competent authority rejected the society’s first deemed conveyance application, referring to matters including the land’s slum status, construction irregularities, municipal notices and competing title claims. The society did not challenge that order. It filed a second application instead and, in September 2025, obtained conveyance of the entire 2,666.80-square-metre plot.
In March 2026 the High Court set that later order aside, since a successive application could not reopen the earlier decision, but it preserved an appropriate civil remedy to enforce the society’s statutory rights. Sterling then turned to the original 2016 rejection.
Why the ten-year gap was not fatal
The contesting respondents said the delay was unexplained, the rejection had become final, and the society should file a civil suit. They also raised objections about construction permissions and competing property rights.
The Court accepted that the society had been negligent in not challenging the rejection promptly. It still weighed the pleaded management disputes, the appointment of an administrator, later elections and the need for structural repairs, and took judicial notice of the pandemic-related exclusion of limitation periods.
The deeper reason, the Court explained, is that MOFA imposes a continuing statutory obligation to convey the land and building. The time within which a promoter should execute conveyance is not a deadline that extinguishes the society’s right to ask for it. In paragraph 30, Justice Marne stated: “Thus, mere delay does not defeat the right of a housing society to secure title in the land.”
A flat purchaser’s interest extends to a proportionate share in the land, the judgment reasons. Refusing the conveyance remedy on a rigid view of delay could leave purchasers unable to redevelop while the promoter or landowner keeps an interest that ought to have been conveyed.
That does not mean every belated challenge will succeed. The Court distinguished earlier decisions involving a society’s delayed challenge to a conveyance already granted to another society, or disputes complicated enough to need a civil trial. Sterling’s case involved proportionate land division, and the opposing parties had not adjusted their positions in the way contemplated in the authority relied on against it.
Challenge the original order, do not reapply
The Court read the earlier liberty to start appropriate civil proceedings as allowing this challenge to the original rejection. It pointed to previous cases in which societies that wrongly pursued successive applications or corrective orders were allowed to attack the underlying conveyance decision instead.
The judgment does not endorse repeated applications for the same relief before the competent authority. It permits judicial scrutiny of the original rejection through the remedy used in this petition.
Case: Sterling Apartment Co-operative Housing Society Ltd. v. The Competent Authority and District Deputy Registrar, Co-operative Societies, Mumbai City (3) and Others
Number: Writ Petition No. 8287 of 2026
Court and Bench: Bombay High Court; Justice Sandeep V. Marne
Decision: November 5, 2026
Citation: 2026:BHC-AS:45354
Outcome: Petition partly allowed; 2016 rejection set aside and application remanded for proportionate land division. No costs; stay refused.