When the Other Side Won't Sign: MahaRERA Circular 50/2025

The deadlock it addresses

A cancelled booking stays on the registration record until a deed of cancellation is executed and registered. A promised flat is not yours on paper until the agreement for sale is executed and registered. Both need two signatures. When one side has been ordered to sign and simply does not, the order on its own changes nothing at the sub-registrar's office.

MahaRERA Circular 50/2025 of 18 November 2025 deals with that gap. Where a promoter or an allottee has been directed to execute and register an agreement for sale or a deed of cancellation and fails to, MahaRERA can appoint a fit and proper person to execute and register it instead. That is how Economic Laws Practice and KS&K describe the circular.

Where it came from

The circular followed a Bombay High Court order of 6 October 2025. In that case a developer had cancelled an allotment for missed instalments and asked MahaRERA either to order the allottees to sign a deed of cancellation or to appoint someone to sign it. MahaRERA's order allowed that, and the High Court noted the alternative remedy when the allottees did not comply. The case started with a developer, and the circular works in both directions.

What it does for a buyer

A buyer usually meets the circular in one of two places. One is a promoter who has taken money and will not execute the agreement for sale. Section 13 of the RERA Act already bars a promoter from taking more than 10% of the cost without a registered agreement, so a refusal to sign is itself a breach. The other is a cancellation the buyer wants recorded so the refund question can move.

In both cases the order has to exist first. You file a complaint with MahaRERA under section 31, ask specifically for the document to be executed, and ask in the alternative for a fit and proper person to be appointed if the other side does not comply.

What it does not settle

Commentators point out that the circular does not say how the allottee's money is treated when a cancellation is registered. A registered cancellation ends the booking on paper. Getting your money back is a separate claim.

For that, section 18 is the remedy. If the promoter fails to give possession by the date in the agreement, you can withdraw and recover the amount with interest at the State Bank of India's highest marginal cost of lending rate plus 2%. MahaRERA Circular 51/2025, issued the same day, sets out how orders for interest, compensation and penalty are executed, according to the same commentary.

What to keep ready

Keep every receipt and bank statement for payments to the promoter, the agreement or allotment letter, and every letter or email about the delay or the cancellation. Ask for the document you want executed by name in your complaint, a deed of cancellation or an agreement for sale, because the circular applies to those two.

File on maharera.maharashtra.gov.in, the only official site. If the order goes against you, an appeal to the tribunal must be filed within 60 days.