Forged approvals and the 65 Dombivli buildings: a fake building permission check you can run at the source

The families who bought flats in 65 Dombivli buildings did what buyers are usually told to do. By their own account, they looked up the MahaRERA registration and saw building plan approvals, and many took home loans from nationalised banks. In November 2024 the Bombay High Court ordered the buildings demolished anyway: the permissions behind them had never been issued by the planning authority. About 6,500 families lived in them, by the count the press reported. Every check they ran was a check of a document. None was a fake building permission check at the source, which is the check this article walks through.

What happened in Dombivli#

It began with questions, not a collapse. In 2021 an architect from Dombivli used Right to Information applications to ask about the MahaRERA registrations of buildings around the town, and took the matter to the Bombay High Court as a public interest petition. When the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) checked its records, the building permissions 65 developers had filed with MahaRERA turned out not to be permissions it had issued.

KDMC's town planning department went to the police, and two FIRs registered in Dombivli in September and October 2022 named the 65 developers between them. A special investigation team froze the developers' bank accounts and made arrests, 15 by the count later reported, and the Enforcement Directorate sought the case papers, saying it suspected money laundering. MahaRERA, alerted by KDMC, suspended 52 of the projects in October 2022, the Free Press Journal reported at the time.

In November 2024 the High Court ordered KDMC to demolish the 65 buildings and dismissed the residents' applications for interim relief. In the litigation it held that registration under RERA does not make an unauthorised building lawful, and pointed buyers to compensation claims against the developers and the civic officials. By 10 December 2024, PTI reported, six buildings had been razed and four partly demolished. The court allowed the residents three months, to February 2025, to seek regularisation; when it heard the matter that month, the applications had been rejected and it refused further relief.

The same petition produced the change that matters to every buyer since. On 19 November 2024 the court directed every municipal body in the state to link its website to MahaRERA's within three months, and meanwhile to upload each commencement and occupancy certificate on its own website within 48 hours of issue. MahaRERA had already tightened its own door: since 19 June 2023 it registers a new project only after the planning authority confirms, by designated email, that the commencement certificate filed is one it issued. It has since begun sending the occupancy certificates of lapsed projects back to the authorities for the same confirmation.

What you need before you start#

• The project's MahaRERA registration number and its page on the portal. Checking a project on the MahaRERA portal walks through finding it.
• The documents in the permission slots: the commencement certificate (CC), the building plan approval (an IOD in Mumbai), the layout approval, and the promoter's declaration about the CC.
• Your draft agreement for sale or allotment letter. Where it names the permissions, those numbers and dates are what you will match.
• The name of the planning authority. The CC names it, and who signs your development permission explains why it differs from place to place.
• Time: an evening for the online part, and up to 30 days if you have to write to the authority.

The check, step by step#

Step 1. Read the uploaded certificate. Open the CC from the project's permission slots and note six things: the issuing authority, the permission or outward number, the date, the survey or CTS number, the buildings or wings, and the floors permitted. You should see a numbered, dated letter from the authority to the owner or developer. Red flags: a number or date you cannot read, a survey number that differs from the land in the title report, or a file in the CC slot that is something else, such as a declaration or a plinth notice.

Step 2. Check what it covers. Many projects receive their CC in stages, first up to plinth or a particular floor and then further certificates for the floors above. MahaRERA's Circular 32/2021 of 7 June 2021 requires the promoter to file a declaration in Format D stating up to which stage the CC has been obtained, and to update it as further certificates arrive. Find your floor in it. The red flag is a flat above the last floor any certificate on file covers. A certificate also runs on a clock, set out in sanctioned plans online, and a permission's four years.

Step 3. Match the number across your papers. The permission's number and date should be identical in the MahaRERA upload, wherever your draft agreement or allotment letter names it, and on the display board at the site gate. Outside Mumbai, UDCPR Regulation 2.8.3 makes that board show the order number and date of the permission, the built-up area permitted, the RERA registration number and, since a December 2021 corrigendum, a QR code generated in the online building permission system. Red flags: two numbers for one building, a board with no permission number, or a sales office copy that differs from the upload.

Step 4. Look it up in the authority's own system. In Mumbai, permissions run through the corporation's Online Building Plan Approval System, which issues the CC online, first for work up to plinth. KDMC, like many bodies in the state, works on the state's Building Plan Management System at mahavastu.maharashtra.gov.in, whose citizen search finds a proposal by its number or code and shows the approval certificates issued against it. Outside Mumbai, UDCPR Regulation 2.6.4 also requires the authority to make the sanctioned plans available on its website, where it has one, until a month after the last occupancy certificate; how to read a sanctioned plan decodes their colours. You should see the same number, date, plot and floors. Red flags: no record, a record for a different plot, or one that stops at a lower floor.

Step 5. Ask the authority in writing. Where nothing is online, write to the town planning department, or send its public information officer a Right to Information application, asking for a certified copy of the certificate, quoting its number, date and survey number, or for confirmation that it was issued. Section 7(1) of the Act gives the officer 30 days to reply, and this is how the Dombivli permissions were first questioned. The red flag is a reply that the authority has no such record.

Step 6. Check who signed the plans. Under UDCPR Regulation 2.2.16 every plan carries the name, address and registration or licence number of the architect, town planner, licensed engineer or supervisor who signed it, as who is allowed to sign your building plans explains. An architect's number, in the form CA/year/number, can be looked up on the Council of Architecture's online register, and section 37 of the Architects Act, 1972 reserves the title for registered architects. Red flags: a number that is not on the register, or one registered to someone else.

An analogy: the degree certificate and the registrar#

Employers stopped trusting photocopied degree certificates long ago. A certificate is a claim about a record, and the record sits with the university. So they write to the registrar, quoting the roll number and the year, and the registrar says yes or no. A building permission works the same way. The PDF on a registration page is the photocopy, the planning authority is the registrar, and the permission's number and date are the roll number you quote.

Meera's twelfth floor#

Meera (illustrative, as our stories always are) is 41, upgrading from her Thane flat to a 3BHK and shortlisting in Thane district, including a tower near Dombivli. Her broker summed it up as "RERA registered, bank approved, all permissions in place", and her instinct, as usual, was to leave the papers to him. The Dombivli headlines changed her mind, and she gave the check two evenings. Names and numbers in this story are illustrative.

Steps 1, 3 and 4 went cleanly. The CC on MahaRERA was issued by KDMC, its number and date matched her draft agreement and the board at the gate, and the same proposal came up in the state system's citizen search. The snag was step 2. The Format D declaration said the certificate covered the tower up to the eighth floor, and the further certificate for the floors above had been applied for. The flat she had been offered was on the twelfth.

The sales office said the certificate would come. Meera paid nothing until it did. Seven weeks later the further CC appeared on the project's MahaRERA page and in the authority's system with matching numbers, and only then did she pay the booking amount. Nothing about the project was wrong. What she avoided was paying for a floor that had no permission yet, on someone's word that it would come.

What the filings show, and what they cannot#

The register is where the check starts, because it tells you which certificate to look for. Before you go to the authority you need the permission's number and date, and every MahaRERA project has a free page on ReraGenie whose permission chain shows which of the five permission slots holds a file and the date it was uploaded, beside every filed document.

Of the 56,068 published MahaRERA projects as updated on 3 October 2026, 49,932, or 89.1 percent, have a file in the commencement certificate slot; the occupancy certificate bar is lower because that certificate comes at the end. A slot almost always holds something. The question is never whether a certificate was uploaded but whether the authority issued it, and only the authority can answer that.

What the buyer report adds#

The Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report reads one project's filing and selected filed documents. For this check it gives you three things: a list of what to verify before you book, drawn from the red flags and the checks that came back clear, each fact with its filing date; land and title answered as five questions, including what the legal title report concludes and the exceptions it attaches; and the promoter's other registrations and how they ended. It includes the project's filed documents as a ZIP, which is where the certificate you take to the authority comes from. What no report can do is confirm a permission with the planning authority on your behalf. That step stays yours. See what the report covers.

The check, in one list#

• Download the CC from the project's permission slots and note the authority, number, date, survey number, buildings and floors.
• Read the Format D declaration and find your floor in it.
• Match the number and date across the MahaRERA upload, your draft papers and the site display board.
• Search the authority's online system by proposal or file number, and look for the sanctioned plans on its website.
• Where nothing is online, ask the town planning department or file an RTI application for a certified copy or confirmation.
• Look up the architect on the Council of Architecture's register.
• Pay nothing while any of these is open.

The permission sits in a longer chain that starts with the application and ends with the occupancy certificate: from application to commencement certificate covers the start, what the completion and occupancy certificates prove covers the end, and the 12 documents to check before buying puts the CC in the order a buyer meets it.

Methodology and sources#

• The Dombivli case, from press reports: the Bombay High Court's November 2024 orders in the public interest petition, including the directions of 19 November 2024 (LiveLaw, Lawbeat, Free Press Journal); the 2022 FIRs, the special investigation team, the arrests and the Enforcement Directorate's request (Free Press Journal); MahaRERA's suspension of 52 projects (Free Press Journal, October 2022); the demolition count (PTI, 10 December 2024). The 6,500 figure is reported as families in the Marathi press and as residents in some English reports.
• MahaRERA's verification of commencement certificates from 19 June 2023, and Circular 32/2021 of 7 June 2021 on the Format D declaration.
• UDCPR Regulations 2.2.16, 2.6.4, 2.7.1 and 2.8.3, consolidated UDCPR of 30 January 2025.
• Permission slot figures: ReraGenie analysis of MahaRERA filings, as updated on 3 October 2026. A file in a slot is an upload, not proof that the permission was granted.

This article is educational and not legal advice. For a dispute, consult a lawyer who practices before your state's RERA.