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The night before...taking on the Mickey Mouse committee of our housing society

I earlier wrote about the delusional secretary and his Mickey Mouse committee in our housing society who weren't allowing us to rent out our house.

Since then my parents in law swooped in and got us a letter from the deputy registrar directing the society to let us rent our place.

We found a tenant after losing four months of rent thank to the society goons.

And suddenly the society, who had not replied to our application for four months, has called for a general body meeting to 'enforce' a ruling passed by them two months back not allowing people to rent out our house.

That meeting's tomorrow. We have pumped ourselves up for the fight. We have figured out that we have a solid case:

  • the society cannot stop a person from renting their house and passing any such law is illegal
  • the Maharashtra Co-operation act, section 79, 2001 actually encourages people to rent out their vacant flats to help bring down property prices
  • we have seen cases where court rulings have overruled societies who have charged unjust amounts from people who have rented out their house or societies who have tried to bar people from renting their house to bachelors, spinsters or foreigners
  • we have gone through the legal route - registered agreement, all in white, police NOC, prior letter to the society... we have done it all
  • the society committee, on its part, hasn't replied to our application. AND in a consumer court ruling a society secretary was fined Rs 7,000 for not replying to a society member
  • we have a letter from the deputy registrar asking the society to allow us to rent out our house
  • AND our trump card, the nuclear option, society committee members need to form an indemnity form, M20. Without that, any rule passed by them is illegal. My sources tell me that the secretary our banana republic haven't filled the forms

They have harassed us enough and more. Hopefully tomorrow it will be our chance to sock it back to them.

It won't be easy. Society meetings are as unparliamentary as the Indian Parliament. But the trick is to have a good breakfast and outshout the buggers.

Paraphrasing the Mumbai Indians, 'society hila denge!'. We have to stamp out what Amitabh Bachchan called, 'society ke keere' in Hum.

I will keep you updated on what happened.

PS. Kainaz says I should leave the Hindi parts to her.

Comments

Reema said…
Ironically but it reminds me of the Priyadarshan’s Ye tera ghar ye mera ghar where Sunil Shetty is actually fighting to evacuate the tenant. But here the plot is different. Actually the protagonist is fighting to let out his house. Interesting. Any producer learns about this, I am sure his mental workshop will begin working 24*7. Jokes apart, pray you win the battle!
2 May 2009 at 22:53
k said…
Oops I forgot to speak in hindi but you did:)and inspite of that we won.
3 May 2009 at 05:49
Rhea said…
He he( at the last line!). This is ridiculous.. You've been writing about this for quite sometime which obviously means that they've still not resolved the issue. Why harass like that? Most unfair!
3 May 2009 at 06:24
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