• How MREAT ordered the Mahalaxmi Tower project to revert from commercial to residential use
• The full sequence of allegations and counter statements
• What the MahaRERA deregistration warning on the project’s page means for buyers
• Why this is one of the rarest of rare orders in Indian real estate history
• The homebuyers’ fight and what they won
• DB Realty’s Shahid Balwa’s response in full, unedited
• Why Prestige Estates’ Irfan Razack chose silence
• What comes next as the matter heads to the Bombay High Court

There are judgements that lawyers discuss. And then there are judgements that make homebuyers cry with relief. The Maharashtra Real Estate Appellate Tribunal’s order in the matter of Mahalaxmi Tower is the second kind. After years of waiting, of legal battles, of watching a project they had booked as residential apartments transform into something else entirely without their consent, a group of homebuyers have been told by a statutory tribunal that they were right all along, and that the developer must go back to what was promised.

A residential project promised to homebuyers in 2007 cannot be converted into a commercial tower simply because the commercial plan works for the developer.

That is the central message emerging from a landmark order of the Maharashtra Real Estate Appellate Tribunal (MREAT), which has delivered a major setback to DB Realty and Prestige Estates Projects over the Turf View project at Mahalaxmi, Mumbai.

In a judgment pronounced on August 25, 2026, the Tribunal allowed appeals filed by three sets of homebuyers who had booked flats nearly two decades ago and paid approximately half the consideration. The Tribunal has now ordered the project to return to its original residential character.

The ruling not only overturns a chain of decisions taken by MahaRERA and the promoters, but also raises serious questions about the attempt to move from residential development to commercial construction while existing homebuyers were still waiting for the flats they had booked.

What readers need to know

• The Tribunal has ordered the project to revert to its original residential plan.
• The change of promoter approved by MahaRERA in 2021 has been set aside.
• The project’s deregistration in 2022 has been quashed.
• The termination of the three homebuyers’ allotments has been held illegal.
• The promoters have been directed to execute registered agreements for sale within one month.
• The project must be updated on the MahaRERA portal, with the three appellants shown as allottees.
• A penalty equivalent to two percent of the project cost has been imposed under Section 61 of RERA.
• The Tribunal found that the promoter relied on the consent of buyers who had already exited the project.
• MahaRERA’s website continues to display a warning that the project is deregistered and that buyers should not purchase or transact in it.
• DB Realty has said it will challenge the order before the Bombay High Court.

A 2007 promise left unfinished

The dispute began in 2007, when buyers booked apartments of approximately 3,000 square feet each in the proposed Orchid Turf View residential project at Dr. E. Moses Road, Mahalaxmi.

The three sets of appellants paid around 50 percent of the total consideration. According to the judgment, the payments made for the flats were:

Yet, despite receiving substantial payments, the original promoter did not execute and register agreements for sale.

The project was subsequently registered with MahaRERA as an ongoing residential project under registration number P51900003617. Its completion date, originally fixed for December 2020, was later extended to June 2026. At the time of the Tribunal’s judgment, however, the project remained incomplete, and possession had not been given to the appellants.

For the buyers, this was not merely a delayed possession dispute. They had paid crores in 2007, waited for years, repeatedly asked for formal agreements and were then confronted with a plan to change the nature of the project altogether.

The sequence of allegations

The Tribunal’s findings followed a series of events spanning more than a decade.

1. Agreements were never registered

The promoters accepted more than the permissible advance amount without executing registered agreements for sale. The Tribunal held that this violated Section 4 of the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act and Section 13 of RERA.

The buyers had sent repeated reminders seeking execution and registration of the agreements. According to the judgment, those requests were not acted upon.

2. The first termination was withdrawn

In October 2016, the promoters attempted to cancel the allotments and claimed that the sale consideration had been adjusted against an unrelated group project.

The buyers objected. The termination was later revoked in 2017, but the underlying agreements still remained unexecuted.

3. The project was sought to be transferred

In July 2021, the original promoter applied under Section 15 of RERA to transfer the project to Turf Estate Joint Venture LLP.

The promoter represented to MahaRERA that the required two-thirds consent had been obtained from the allottees. It also represented that the allottees had consented to changing the project from residential to residential-cum-commercial.

MahaRERA approved the change of promoter in October 2021 and communicated the decision in November 2021.

4. The consent count was challenged

The homebuyers argued that the consent relied upon by the promoter was not valid because most of the persons whose consent letters were used had already exited the project and accepted refunds before the application was filed.

The Tribunal examined the dates and found that 13 of the 14 consents relied upon by the promoter came from people who were no longer allottees when the application for change of promoter was filed on July 26, 2021.

The Tribunal held that the promoter had used old consent letters to represent that it had the consent of the required majority at the relevant time.

It described the representation as misleading and deceitful, and held that the consent could not support either the change of promoter or the proposed change in the project.

5. Residential became commercial

The original project was registered as residential. The consent relied upon by the promoters, even on their own case, was for a residential-cum-commercial project.

The Tribunal found that the project was subsequently pursued as a purely commercial development. It held that the promoters could not use the consent for a residential-cum-commercial change to justify an outright commercial project.

The judgment records that commercial permissions and construction-related steps were pursued even while the Tribunal’s stay concerning deregistration remained operative.

The Tribunal treated this as a serious breach and held that the project was being altered for the promoters’ own benefit, at the expense of the homebuyers who had purchased residential flats.

6. The bookings were terminated

In January 2022, the promoters terminated the appellants’ allotments and offered to refund the money with interest.

They relied on a clause in the allotment letters that allowed the developer, at its sole discretion and without assigning any reason, to revoke a booking and refund the money.

The Tribunal found the clause to be one-sided, unfair and oppressive. It held that the buyers had not defaulted and that there was no demonstrated impossibility or financial infeasibility preventing completion of the project.

The termination was therefore set aside.

7. The project was deregistered

After terminating the bookings, the promoters applied to MahaRERA to deregister the project.

The argument was that there were no allottees left and, therefore, no continuing project requiring RERA registration.

MahaRERA accepted the application and ordered deregistration in September 2022.

The Tribunal rejected that reasoning. Since the termination of the three appellants’ allotments was illegal, they continued to be allottees in law. The promoters could not first terminate their bookings unlawfully and then rely on that termination to claim that no allottees remained.

The Tribunal also relied on MahaRERA’s deregistration guidelines, which require either zero allottees or the necessary consent where the rights of existing allottees are affected.

What the homebuyers argued

The appellants’ case was that the promoters were attempting to escape their contractual and statutory obligations through a series of connected steps.

They argued that:

• They had paid approximately half the consideration for residential flats.
• The promoters had failed to execute registered agreements for sale.
• Their allotments were terminated without any buyer default.
• The project was being converted from residential to commercial without their consent.
• The promoter-change application relied on consents given by people who had already exited.
• Deregistration was being used to remove the project from MahaRERA’s jurisdiction.
• Keeping their money in fixed deposits did not compensate them for losing the flats or the appreciation in Mumbai property prices.
• The project should continue as a residential development, as originally promised.

The Tribunal accepted the central substance of these arguments.

It also noted that deregistration could deprive the buyers of remedies before MahaRERA and that they had suffered significant opportunity loss after waiting since 2007.

What the developers argued

The promoters took a different position.

They argued that most allottees had voluntarily settled their claims, accepted refunds with interest and exited the project. The remaining buyers, they said, could not hold the entire project hostage.

The promoters also contended that:

• The required two-thirds consent for the change of promoter had been obtained.
• The same majority had consented to the change in project plans.
• The buyers’ allotments had been validly terminated under the allotment clause.
• The refund amounts had been kept in fixed deposits after the buyers refused to accept them.
• There were no allottees left after the terminations.
• The project no longer required RERA registration because the number of apartments had fallen below the statutory threshold.
• MahaRERA could not force a commercial entity to continue a project that was allegedly no longer financially or otherwise viable.
• The buyers’ financial interests had been protected through the refund and fixed-deposit arrangement.

The Tribunal rejected these submissions. It held that the promoters had not established that the project was financially unviable and could not use an unlawful termination to create the basis for deregistration.

The Tribunal’s key findings

The Tribunal answered every major issue against the promoters.

It held that:

1. The termination of the allotment letters was not legally sustainable.
2. The approval for the change of promoter was not sustainable.
3. The deregistration order was not sustainable.
4. The orders rejecting the homebuyers’ complaints were not sustainable.
5. The impugned orders required interference.

The Tribunal also held that the allotment letters executed in 2007 remained valid and binding contracts.

Although the allotments predated RERA, the Tribunal relied on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Newtech Promoters and Developers Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Uttar Pradesh to hold that RERA applies to ongoing projects and protects the rights of stakeholders in those projects.

It further relied on Supreme Court precedents concerning unfair builder-buyer clauses and the principle that fraud or misrepresentation cannot sustain an order obtained from a competent authority.

Orders passed against the promoters

The Tribunal has directed the promoters to:

• Execute and register agreements for sale with the appellants within one month.
• Restore the appellants’ status as allottees.
• Update the MahaRERA portal.
• Continue the project as a residential development.
• Follow the original residential plan represented to the buyers.
• Pay costs of Rs 50,000 to the appellants in each connected appeal.
• Deposit a penalty equivalent to two percent of the project cost within 30 days.

This is an extraordinary outcome in a real estate dispute. Instead of permitting the promoter to exit, terminate the buyers and proceed with a new commercial plan, the Tribunal has effectively required the project to go back to its original starting point.

That is why the case stands out. Developers are often able to restructure projects, change entities, renegotiate plans or offer refunds when a project becomes difficult. Here, the Tribunal has said that the original promise to the buyers cannot be erased through a chain of later transactions and regulatory applications.

The MahaRERA warning remains

Despite the Tribunal’s order, the MahaRERA registration page for project number P51900003617 continues to display the project as deregistered.

A warning on the page cautions visitors not to buy or make transactions in the project.

This creates an important practical warning for anyone considering an investment, booking, agreement, funding arrangement or joint venture connected with Turf View. Until the portal is formally updated in accordance with the Tribunal’s order, prospective buyers and investors should not proceed with any transaction without taking independent legal advice and verifying the project’s current regulatory status.

The Tribunal has directed the promoters to update the portal and restore the project’s position. The continued warning therefore underscores the gap between the legal order and the project’s present online status.

A blow to Prestige’s Mahalaxmi plans

Prestige Estates Projects entered the structure through arrangements involving Pandora Projects and Turf Estate LLP.

The judgment records that Pandora had raised approximately Rs 525 crore through the issuance of non-convertible debentures to a fund managed by Kotak Special Situations. Those financing arrangements, along with conveyance deeds and the commercial construction plan, were linked to the development structure that the Tribunal has now invalidated.

The order does not merely affect the original promoter. It puts the wider commercial development structure under pressure, including the plans involving Prestige.

Prestige is a major developer, and that makes the judgment especially significant. The ruling demonstrates that even a high-value project involving institutional finance and a prominent development partner cannot move ahead on a commercial basis if the rights of existing residential allottees have not been lawfully dealt with.

The Tribunal’s order is therefore a major setback for the developers. It sends a clear message that a change in project strategy cannot extinguish the rights of buyers who entered into binding contracts years earlier.

Balwa responds; Razack does not

Queries were sent to Shahid Balwa of DB Realty and Irfan Razack of Prestige Estates Projects.

Razack did not respond.

Balwa replied:

“Every allottee in this project, barring three, accepted a full refund with interest years ago and moved on. I may also add that out of the 5 flats purchased by the same family 2 flat refunds were taken. The booking clearly says that this entire group of 5 flats is to be taken as 1 booking more particularly now in the context of RERA.

Having taken the refund for 2 flats, The refund due to these three has been lying in fixed deposit ever since. What this order does is permit three holdouts to dictate the fate of an entire project, its lenders and hundreds of crores of invested capital. This obviously is not the intent of the Law. The Hon’ble Supreme Courts recent judgements in this regards clear the direction of the law.

The order respectfully is bad in law and more so without jurisdiction. The tribunal has adjudicated subject not within its remit and not within the law. That is not consumer protection — it is the oppression of the majority by a minority, and the Hon’ble High Court will now decide it.

The appeal is being filed before the Hon’ble Bombay High Court. We are confident of the outcome and will say nothing further while the matter is sub judice.”

The statement has been reproduced in full and without alteration.

The challenge before the Bombay High Court will now determine whether the Tribunal’s order stands, is modified or is stayed. Until then, the dispute remains sub judice.

A rare reversal

This is among the rarest of cases in which a developer has been directed to go back rather than move forward.

The project had travelled from a residential promise to a proposed commercial development. The promoter structure had changed. The original bookings had been terminated. The project had been deregistered. A substantial financing arrangement had been put in place.

The Tribunal has now reversed that chain of events.

For the three homebuyers, the decision is a remarkable victory after nearly 20 years of waiting. For other homebuyers, it is a reminder that patience does not mean surrender—and that a promoter cannot necessarily defeat a buyer’s rights by changing the project, changing the promoter, terminating the allotment and then removing the project from the RERA framework.

The final legal chapter will now be written by the Bombay High Court. But for the moment, the message from the Tribunal is unmistakable: Turf View was sold as residential, and it must return to being residential.

Also Read: MahaRERA Asks Builder to Submit Completion Milestones to Homebuyers While Granting Extension

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