Online responses to housing society grievances from Aug

Pune: From next month, managing committee members of cooperative housing societies will be able to respond to grievances filed by members online, eliminating the need for physical visits to deputy registrar offices.
Since October last year, cooperative housing society members have been able to file complaints online on Sahakar Samvadh portal. However, the managing committee members against whom complaints were lodged had to make repeated visits to the offices of deputy registrar to submit their responses.

State cooperation department officials said that they are working on upgrading the portal, which will enable both the parties to file their responses online, following which the deputy registrar would issue a final order based on the merits of each case.Since October last year, approximately 3,611 complaints have been filed, of which 2,898 have been resolved, and the orders uploaded on the portal with a pendency of about 700 complaints. Citizens can file complaints in 23 categories as specified on the portal. The final orders of the deputy registrars are also uploaded for public access. Housing society members who have filed complaints online told TOI that the process is simple, and they also receive an intimation of the complaint filed.
“While filing of complaints has been made easy, resolving the complaint does take time as the orders are put out late by the deputy registrar,” said a member who had filed the complaint.
Currently, society members against whom a complaint has been filed needs to visit the deputy registrar’s office. Their remarks are not uploaded on the portal, neither is the complainant informed whether the complaint has been accepted by the members. “If the portal uploads both the complainant’s and the respondent’s statements, the matter will be more clearer,” said a senior citizen from Undri who had complained against his society members. The state cooperation department had mandated that all online complaints filed by housing society members must be resolved within two months of filing, according to the directives provided to deputy registrars.
A comprehensive standard operating procedure (SOP), to,o was delineated across the state outlining the timeline for various complaints logged on the portal. However, some complainants said that the timeline has not been maintained and there is delay from the deputy registrar regarding the final order, while some of the complaints filed on the portal and forwarded to the registrar having no territorial jurisdiction were closed instead of transferring to the concerned registrar as prescribed in the SOP, a complainant said.
Advocate Shreeprasad Parab, expert director, Maharashtra State Co-operative Housing Federation Ltd, who has helped with the portal said that the updated version providing additional information about circulars, acts, rules and bylaws will help citizens further.