The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) will soon issue an advisory to all Real Estate Regulatory Authorities and State Governments to protect the interest of home buyers and other real estate industry stakeholders amid lockdown in view of coronavirus outbreak .

This has been decided after a high level meeting of Central Advisory Council (CAC) chaired by Housing and Urban Affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday. The meeting was attended by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, Secretary, MoHUA Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary Department of Legal Affairs AK Mendiratta and other stakeholders of real estate industry.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, the concerns of the real estate sector particularly the impact of the pandemic COVID-19 and consequent nationwide lockdown were deliberated in the meeting.

“There was a demand for providing special relief for the real estate sector so that the sector is able to cope up with adverse impact of the current crisis.  COVID-19 has already disrupted construction activities due to reverse migration of labour at large scale and disruption of supply chain of various construction materials,” the statement said.

“After detailed deliberations, the Housing Minister assured all the participants that the matter will be considered keeping in view the interests of all stakeholders. He further said that MoHUA will soon issue,” it said.

The real estate body Naredco has estimated that the sector would incur losses of Rs 1 lakh crore on account of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown and sought a $200-billion package from the Government to kick-start the economy. It also demanded that the ban on construction sites be lifted and provisions of the insolvency law should be suspended for at least six months to prevent the ‘wholesale takeover’ of Indian companies.