She had no intention of defying any order. A genuine miscommunication between her and her lawyer meant a specific compliance step in an ongoing RERA matter slipped past its deadline — and under the law as it stood at the time, the notional consequence on paper included imprisonment, for what was, at its core, an honest administrative failure.
A homebuyer had filed a complaint with her state's Real Estate Regulatory Authority against a developer over possession delays on an under-construction apartment — a straightforward, well-founded RERA matter, the kind the Act exists specifically to resolve. The Authority ruled substantially in her favour, and the matter proceeded to an Appellate Tribunal stage on a separate, narrower procedural question the developer had raised.
Where the Genuine Mistake Happened
The Tribunal issued a specific compliance direction requiring a particular document to be filed within a set window — a routine procedural step, not a substantive ruling on the underlying dispute. Due to a genuine miscommunication between the buyer and her legal representative during a period when she had also changed counsel, the filing slipped past its deadline by a matter of weeks, discovered only when the developer's counsel flagged the lapse to press for a technical advantage in the broader dispute.
Why This Became Genuinely Frightening, Not Just Inconvenient
At the time this occurred — before the Jan Vishwas Amendment to Section 68 took effect in May 2026 — non-compliance with an Appellate Tribunal order carried, on paper, the possibility of imprisonment in addition to a monetary penalty. For an ordinary homebuyer with no history of defiance, facing even the theoretical spectre of imprisonment over what was fundamentally a missed paperwork deadline caused by a lawyer transition was a genuinely disproportionate and frightening escalation of what had started as a straightforward possession dispute she was, on the merits, actually winning.
How the Immediate Situation Was Actually Managed
The response focused on demonstrating, clearly and promptly, that the lapse was a genuine, non-wilful administrative failure rather than any deliberate defiance — filing the overdue document immediately upon discovery, along with a detailed explanation of the counsel transition that had caused the gap, and formally requesting the Tribunal treat the delay as a condonable procedural lapse rather than wilful non-compliance. On these facts, the Tribunal accepted the explanation, condoned the delay, and the underlying possession dispute continued to be heard on its actual merits — but the buyer had genuinely, if briefly, faced a level of anxiety over a criminal consequence that had nothing to do with the substance of her well-founded claim.
Why This Case Matters Even Though It Resolved Without Incident
The fact that this particular situation resolved favourably doesn't mean the underlying legal exposure wasn't real while it existed — a genuine, good-faith buyer, actively pursuing a legitimate grievance the Act exists to address, found herself exposed to a criminal consequence over a lawyer-transition miscommunication, purely because of how Section 68 was drafted before this year's amendment. This is precisely the kind of case that illustrates why the Jan Vishwas Amendment's removal of imprisonment for allottees, which we covered separately, was a genuinely meaningful, overdue correction rather than a purely symbolic one — real people were exposed to a real, disproportionate risk under the old provision, for exactly the kind of administrative lapse that has nothing to do with the conduct RERA was actually designed to punish.
The Practical Lesson, Regardless of the Law's Current State
If you're pursuing any RERA matter — or any tribunal proceeding generally — a change in legal representation deserves an explicit, documented handover of every live deadline and compliance obligation in the matter, communicated clearly to the client rather than assumed to transfer automatically. This case resolved well because the lapse was genuinely explainable and promptly corrected — but the anxiety and risk it created were entirely avoidable with a slightly more careful transition process, regardless of how the underlying law happens to treat non-compliance at any given time.