Hi,
I own an apartment in Bengaluru, but currently live outside the country. Our apartment is now 4 years old, and the builder handed over the day-to-day operations to our association in July 2017. The association itself was registered under KSRA, 1960 in September 2017.
As per our bye-laws, the management committee comprises of 16 members, i.e. 8 office bearers and 8 executive members. Ever since the first committee was formed in August 2017, we have witnessed that members of the MC have been reluctant to share information with other residents, and only shares what they consider need-to-know basis details. As per bye-laws, the MC is supposed to provide a 48 hour notice to all residents before implementing any decision which would have any kind of financial impact on the residents.. this implies, hiring of services, new contracts, KSPCB fines, buying new material, etc.
However, in most cases, the MC does not share such details in advance and only notifies residents after it has procured the services or products, or finalized the contracts.
Now, we have stopped paying the maintenance amount for the last 2 quarters as we would like to see the bills, receipts, contracts, etc and also the bank statements of the association account before making the payment. Moreover, we would like to have an itemized bill which details all of the expenses.
The management committee has still not responded to our query and instead keeps sending us the maintenance invoice. There is no procedure for penalty for late payments, so there has been no penalty applied.
They are now discussing possibility of cutting off the services to our apartment, disallowing apartment to be put on rent, cutting DG, access to amenities,etc. Is this legal under the scenario mentioned above?
Now they say that members interested in viewing bills can come to the association office to take a look. However, we do not live there and cannot go to the association office everytime we want to take a look at the bills or bank statements.
It is utterly frustrating that the management committee chooses to ignore our requests, but then responds on other matters to other residents. This clearly shows bias towards certain residents.
Is there any legal clause I can invoke before I send a legal notice to ask the management committee to share soft copies of bills, contracts and bank statements via email or via google drive upload? Is it possible to file an NCR for this purpose?
I look forward to your kind response and assistance.
Regards,
