How to read MahaRERA orders: the operative part, the dates and what was awarded

Learning how to read MahaRERA orders takes an evening, and it is worth doing before your own arrives. The PDF can run to many pages, most of them a retelling of what each side said and what the authority made of it. The part that decides whether anyone gets paid is a handful of numbered lines at the end, and the order's dates start clocks that run whether or not you have read it. More buyers hold these documents every year: MahaRERA disposed of 6,945 complaints in 2025, 81 percent more than the 3,824 of 2024, according to its year-end figures as reported by Outlook Money. And an order is not yet money.

What you need before you start#

The order will send you back to each of these, so have them open:

• The whole order as a PDF, not a photo of its last page.
• The date a copy reached you, and what shows it: the email it arrived in, or a note of the day you downloaded it.
• Your registered agreement for sale, possession clause marked, and every payment receipt.
• The possession letter and the occupancy certificate's date, if you have them.
• SBI's MCLR schedule from the bank's website, and a calendar.

Meera reads someone else's order#

Meera (illustrative, as our stories always are) has a complaint and no order yet. She took the keys to her twelfth-floor 3BHK in a KDMC tower near Dombivli on 30 June 2026, six months after the 31 December 2025 her agreement promised, with Rs 90 lakh paid by then. Her legal notice claiming Rs 4,90,500 of section 18 interest, sent to the promoter's Thane office and its new Kalyan one as legal notice to builder describes, produced no payment, so she filed with MahaRERA. Her complaint is waiting for its hearing. Names and numbers in this story are illustrative.

The wait taught her what she was asking for. Her project's free page on ReraGenie listed the complaints filed against it with their case numbers, and when she asked in the building's group, a buyer on a lower floor answered. His agreement promised possession by the same 31 December 2025 as hers; he complained in January 2026, as soon as the date passed, and received his order in August 2026, and he forwarded the PDF that evening. Time-poor as ever, Meera was tempted to read the last page and stop. She read it from the top instead, because her own order will need reading the same way.

Reading the order, from the cause title to the compliance date#

Orders differ in layout, but each of these parts is there to be found.

1. The cause title. At the top sit the complaint number, a long reference beginning CC, and the parties: the buyer as complainant, the promoter as respondent. Check the respondent against your agreement: the company that signed it, not the brand on the hoarding. Red flag: an order against a name that is not the entity you paid, since execution runs against the respondent the order names.

2. The dates. The order records when the matter was heard and when it was passed. Write a third date beside them: the day a copy reached you, because section 44 counts the 60 days for an appeal from receipt, as the appellate tribunal applied it in rulings LiveLaw reported in 2024. Red flag: nothing on file to show when the order arrived.

3. The complaint and the reply. The middle pages retell both sides. The promoter's reply lists what the authority had to rule on: a force majeure period, as force majeure in RERA delay claims explains, an extension of the registration, or a claim that the buyer paid late.

4. The findings. Each argument gets an answer, and the answers decide the dates. Where a force majeure period is accepted, the interest may start later than your agreement's date. Red flag: a finding that shortens the period without saying by how much.

5. The operative part. The numbered directions at the end, often under the single word ORDER. Everything above explains them; they say what must happen, and an execution application quotes them back. Red flag: a direction that names no amount and no dates.

6. The award. Read each direction for five things: who pays, on what amount, at what rate, from when, and until when. On a section 18 delay complaint the rate is SBI's highest marginal cost of lending rate plus 2 percent, under rule 18 of Maharashtra's rules, on the amounts paid. Then look for anything set against you: if a direction lets the promoter adjust the interest against a balance you still owe, what reaches you is the difference, and if the order is silent, ask before netting one against the other yourself. Finally, lay the directions beside the relief you asked for. Anything they do not give is what an appeal would be about.

7. The compliance date. A period the order names for paying is the promoter's deadline. Separately, MahaRERA's procedure for executing its orders, Circular No. 51/2025 of 18 November 2025, lets a buyer file an online execution application once 60 days pass without compliance. Reports of the circular differ on whether those days run from the order's date or from its receipt, so file after the later of the two. Red flag: a promise to pay shortly, which sets no date.

An analogy: the prescription#

A visit to a doctor produces pages: the history you gave, the examination, the reasoning. The chemist reads none of it, only the last lines: the medicine, the dose and how many days. A MahaRERA order is built the same way. The facts and findings are the consultation, worth reading to understand the decision. The operative part is the prescription: what the promoter must do, what the Collector enforces if it does not, and what a tribunal is asked to change on appeal.

What the neighbour's order said, and what it is worth#

The neighbour's order, illustrative like the rest of this story, ran to eleven pages, its respondent the promoter company exactly as registered with MahaRERA. The reply had argued that MahaRERA had extended the project's registration; the findings held that the extension had not changed the possession date in his registered agreement, the distinction MahaRERA's four month extension turns on, so the delay ran from 1 January 2026. The operative part was three numbered lines: pay simple interest at SBI's highest MCLR plus 2 percent on the amounts paid, from 1 January 2026 until 30 June 2026, the day possession was handed over; pay Rs 20,000 towards costs; and pay both within 30 days of the order.

It gave no rupee total. Meera did the arithmetic the way computing your delay interest claim sets out: amount paid, times the rate, times the months of delay over twelve. The neighbour had paid Rs 76 lakh by his promised date. Taking an illustrative 10.90 percent throughout, SBI's highest MCLR of 8.90 percent plus 2, six months come to Rs 4,14,200, and the costs take the award to Rs 4,34,200. Nothing was set against it, since he had paid his last instalment at possession.

What she took away was a template. Her notice claimed interest over the same six months, 1 January 2026 to 30 June 2026, on Rs 90 lakh. If her order follows this one, she knows which lines will hold those dates and that amount, and which finding will decide whether the start date stands.

If the promoter does not pay#

The neighbour's 30 days passed in September with no payment and no word, so his next step is the execution application. The machinery behind it:

• The execution application. Under Circular No. 51/2025 the buyer files it online once the 60 days have run. The circular followed the Bombay High Court's order of 6 October 2025 that MahaRERA's orders be executed like civil court decrees, and reports of it describe MahaRERA being able to direct a promoter that still does not comply to file an affidavit of its assets, bank accounts included.
• The recovery warrant. Section 40(1) makes unpaid interest, penalty or compensation recoverable as arrears of land revenue: MahaRERA issues a warrant, and the Collector's office attaches and, if it must, auctions. How recovery warrants turn an order into money follows one stage by stage.
• The penalty. Section 63 makes a promoter who fails to comply with the Authority's orders liable to a penalty for every day the default continues, up to 5 percent of the project's estimated cost in all.

That ratio is why the order is not the end of the work: a warrant moves fastest when someone can say where the promoter's property sits. Before you file, look the project up on ReraGenie. Its free page lists the promoter's other registrations, the complaints and litigation against the project with case numbers, and the declared charges, lender and amount, where filed: the start of an asset note for your application.

If either side appeals#

Section 44 gives either side 60 days from receiving a copy of the order to appeal to the Maharashtra Real Estate Appellate Tribunal, which may condone a late appeal but need not. A buyer who thinks the dates or the rate were wrong uses the same window. A promoter faces one more condition: under the proviso to section 43(5) its appeal is not entertained until it deposits at least 30 percent of any penalty, or the total amount it was ordered to pay the buyer, including interest and compensation, a condition the Supreme Court upheld in the Newtech Promoters case. The neighbour had heard of no appeal, which would have meant the promoter first depositing the amount awarded to him. How MREAT appeals work covers the procedure from either side.

What the buyer report adds#

For a covered Maharashtra project, the Rs 499 ReraGenie buyer report sets out three things that bear on an order like this. Complaints and cases appear in plain words, which shows whether an order like the neighbour's exists to read before your hearing. The possession story, the first promised date against the current one, checks the start date your claim and the order should share. And its rights under RERA section carries a worked delay-interest example, a second check on your arithmetic. It includes the filed documents as a ZIP and a free 90-day project watch, which emails you when the project's filing changes. See what the report covers.

The checklist, in one place#

• Read the whole order once, then the operative part twice.
• Check the respondent is the company your agreement names.
• Write down the date a copy reached you, and keep what proves it.
• Find the from and to dates of the interest, and the finding that fixed them.
• Note the rate and the amount it applies to, and anything set against a balance you owe.
• Compare each direction with the relief you asked for.
• Compute the figure, recording the SBI rate and the date you read it.
• Diarise any period the order names, the last day for an appeal and the first day for an execution application.
• If the money does not come, file the execution application; if an appeal comes, ask the tribunal to enforce the deposit.

Still at the filing stage? How to file a MahaRERA complaint covers the forms and hearings, and how to check a builder's litigation history shows how to find other orders against the same promoter.

Methodology and sources#

• Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, sections 18, 40(1), 43(5), 44 and 63.
• Maharashtra Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Rules, 2017, rule 18.
• MahaRERA Circular No. 51/2025 of 18 November 2025 and the Bombay High Court's order of 6 October 2025, as reported by Moneylife and the WIRC of ICAI's December 2025 newsletter.
• Delay orders on MahaRERA complaints reported by complainants' lawyers in 2025 and 2026; appellate tribunal rulings on late appeals reported by LiveLaw in 2024; the Supreme Court's Newtech Promoters judgment.
• MahaRERA complaint disposals for 2024 and 2025, from its year-end figures as reported by Outlook Money; recovery figures to late 2025 as reported by The Realty Today.

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