SRA flat purchase in Mumbai: the five-year lock-in and the lawful route

In 2019, acting on directions from the Bombay High Court, Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority surveyed its rehab allotments and identified 13,143 occupants living in flats that had been sold or rented to them before the lock-in, then ten years, ran out, and each was given 48 hours to prove a lawful right to stay before eviction. That is what an SRA flat purchase looks like when it is done the wrong way: money paid, keys handed over, and nothing a court will defend. Done the right way, the same purchase is slower and entirely lawful. The difference comes down to one date, one permission, and knowing which of two very different flats you are being offered.

Two flats, one scheme name#

A slum rehabilitation scheme pays for itself. The developer builds rehab tenements that are given free to the eligible slum dwellers on the land, and in return may build further flats and sell them in the open market. Both kinds of flat can stand on the same plot, sometimes in the same building, and brokers call both of them SRA flats. In law they have almost nothing in common.

The rehab tenement is the one the restrictions are about. It was allotted, not sold, and allotments are typically made in the joint names of the head of the household and the spouse. The sale-component flat was sold by the developer under an agreement for sale, like any new flat, from a project registered with MahaRERA.

What the law says#

Section 3E of the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971 says a tenement allotted under a slum rehabilitation scheme shall not be transferred by the allottee "by way of sale, gift, exchange, lease or otherwise" for the first five years from the date of allotment. After that the allottee may transfer it, but only with the permission of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority and in the prescribed procedure.

The period was ten years until the state amended section 3E in December 2023. The Legislative Assembly passed the change on 20 December, after the government said it had received many representations that the restriction was too long and that illegal transfers had increased. The state's housing minister said in December 2023 that the change would bring relief to about 2.5 lakh families living in slum rehabilitation housing. Older guides still say ten years.

Two words in the section matter to a buyer. "Lease" is in the list, so renting the flat out inside the five years is barred as firmly as selling it. And "otherwise" is not decoration. In a July 2026 judgment in Writ Petition 9247 of 2016, the Bombay High Court read it widely: executing a power of attorney, letting the flat to a tenant or simply handing over possession can be a transfer under section 3E, with no sale deed or lease ever registered.

Section 3E(2) sets the consequence: the competent authority shall order the eviction of the person in possession, after a chance to show cause, and may use force to carry it out. In a sale, the person in possession is the buyer. Nor should you count on an amnesty: in December 2019 the Bombay High Court told the state that no unauthorised occupant of a rehab flat could be regularised.

What you need before you start#

The SRA's own transfer checklist asks for most of these.

• The allotment letter, with its date, and the possession letter.
• The seller's entry in Annexure-II, the competent authority's certified list of eligible slum dwellers.
• The society's share certificate in the allottee's name.
• Aadhaar cards for both spouses, since the allotment is usually joint.
• The society's no-objection certificate for the transfer, and a no-dues certificate.
• For you: an income certificate for the current year with Form 16 for this year and the previous two, a domicile certificate, and a notarised declaration in the SRA's format.
• A budget for the transfer fee, stamp duty and registration on top of the price.

Three checks before you pay anything#

1. Establish which flat it is. An allotment letter and an Annexure-II entry mean a rehab tenement; a registered agreement for sale from the developer means a sale-component flat. Red flag: a flat described as a sale flat whose only paper is an allotment letter.
2. Count five years from the allotment date. The Act counts from allotment, not from the day the building was finished or the family moved in. Red flag: a broker counting from any other date, or proposing to sign now and register later.
3. Confirm both allottees will sign. Where the allotment is in joint names, the spouse owns the flat too. Red flag: one spouse selling alone.

The SRA transfer permission, step by step#

Two cost notes. Some guides describe the fee as the higher of the fixed amount and the stamp duty, and older ones still quote Rs 1 lakh, so ask the SRA to state the amount in writing. And the fee is not instead of stamp duty: the sale deed pays duty like any Mumbai resale, 6 percent including the 1 percent metro cess (a point less where every buyer is a woman), on the higher of the price and the ready reckoner value, plus a registration fee of 1 percent capped at Rs 30,000. The arithmetic is in our stamp duty guide, and the society's side of the handover in the share certificate guide.

An analogy: shares that have not vested#

A rehab tenement works like shares granted to an employee. The shares are real and they belong to the employee, but they vest on a schedule, and until they vest the employee cannot sell them. A side agreement to hand them over later does not make the buyer a shareholder, and the company will not record the transfer. Once the shares vest they can be sold, through the company's transfer desk and for its fee. Section 3E is the vesting schedule, and the SRA permission is the transfer desk.

Neha's SRA flat#

Neha (illustrative, as our stories always are) had an SRA flat on her list before she settled on her 2BHK in a Mulund redevelopment project. A broker showed her a resale flat in an SRA building near the station, priced well below the sale-component flats in the next wing, with all papers said to be clear. Names and numbers in this story are illustrative.

She asked for the seller's registered agreement for sale, and the broker produced an allotment letter instead: a rehab tenement, allotted four years and two months earlier in the names of the seller and his wife, and only he was at the meeting. The broker's answer to both problems was an agreement and a power of attorney now, possession at once, registration when the five years were up. That was the snag, and it was fatal: possession on those papers would itself have been a transfer inside the bar.

She walked away, and in Mulund asked first for the papers proving the seller's right to sell: in a redevelopment, the development agreement and the old members' consents, which the checks for buying in a redevelopment set out alongside what the old owners received.

If the flat is a sale-component flat#

A sale-component flat carries none of the section 3E restrictions. It sits in a MahaRERA-registered project, so start with checking the project on the MahaRERA portal. The filing has no field that marks a slum scheme, but the sanctioning authority often gives one away: as updated on 3 October 2026, 933 published MahaRERA registrations name the Slum Rehabilitation Authority as the body that sanctioned them, 775 of them in Mumbai Suburban. Only about four in ten filings name an authority at all, so a blank proves nothing. What no filing holds is the rehab obligations the sale building depends on, which sit in the SRA's Letter of Intent and its conditions, so ask the developer for the Letter of Intent.

Before you pay a token, look the registration up on ReraGenie: the free page carries the full filing, including the sanctioning authority where one is named, the possession timeline and the permission chain, showing which approval slots hold a document and when it was uploaded.

ReraGenie's Rs 499 buyer report reads that registration and sets out three things this purchase turns on: the possession story, first promised date against the current one; land and title as five questions, including the promoter's right to build and sell and the exceptions the legal title report attaches; and the promoter's other registrations and how they ended. A rehab tenement usually has no registration to read, which is why its route runs through the SRA and the society instead.

Neighbouring routes with rules of their own#

MHADA flats bought through the lottery carry their own resale conditions, which the MHADA lottery framework touches on. And this guide is about Mumbai: slum schemes in Maharashtra's other cities run under the UDCPR, explained in the UDCPR slum rehabilitation rules, while Mumbai's other redevelopment routes, for cessed buildings, MHADA colonies and clusters, are decoded in 33(7), 33(5) and 33(9).

The checklist#

• Identify the flat: an allotment letter means a rehab tenement, a registered agreement for sale means a sale-component flat.
• For a rehab tenement, count five years from the allotment date.
• Sign nothing, pay no token and take no possession inside the five years.
• Both allottees sign; the society's NOC and no-dues certificate are in hand.
• SRA permission issued, with the fee stated in writing.
• Sale deed registered, stamp duty paid, Index II kept.
• Society transfers the shares and membership.

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