'Tareekh Pe Tareekh': 100% complete, still no keys; Inside RERA’s extension loop

A housing project misses its promised completion date. The developer asks for more time. The regulator grants it. There is nothing extraordinary about that sequence. Construction can be held up for many reasons, some of them outside a developer's control. Sometimes a few more months are exactly what a project needs to get buyers their homes. The difficulty begins when the wait becomes tareekh pe tareekh.The question is simple. When a delayed project is given more time, how often does that extra time actually result in completion? There is no national public number that answers it.TOI tried to get closer to one by examining Maharashtra, one of the country's largest RERA (Real Estate Regulatory Authority) markets. It analysed 4,237 registrations appearing on MahaRERA's list of projects kept in abeyance after their completion dates had lapsed, as the list stood on Sept 10, 2026. A public reconstruction of MahaRERA filings by ReraGenie was used to identify projects with recorded extension histories. TOI then checked all 110 that the reconstruction showed with at least three recorded extension-history events against MahaRERA's own records. The reconstruction identified 1,154 of the 4,237, or 27.2%, with at least one recorded extension-history event. There were 392 with two or more and 110 with three or more. The 27.2% is not a failure rate. These projects were already on a lapse-related abeyance list, and abeyance is an administrative status. MahaRERA says projects on its lapse-related abeyance list have their bank accounts frozen, while promoters are prohibited from executing agreements for sale or sale deeds until the required compliances are fulfilled.Not every extension-history event represents a new deadline either. More than one filing can relate to the same revised date. What the exercise does establish is how often the completion clock can keep running long after the original date has passed.Abhay Upadhyay, president of the Forum for People's Collective Efforts (FPCE), a homebuyers' body that has examined the use of extensions across several states, argues that the statute is not where the problem lies. He says, "RERA is watertight, what has gone wrong is the practice built around it." The force majeure route under Section 6, in his view, has come to be treated almost as a given, with promoters approaching the regulator confident that an extension will follow. When the percentage does not tell the whole story Often numbers can flatter to deceive. Take Indraprasthanagari Phase 1 in Pune. MahaRERA was told in one extension filing that the project was 98% complete. In another it was 95%. In a later filing it was back to 98%, while the revised completion date moved from December 2022 to May 2023 and then June 2024. An engineer's certificate in January 2023 put the project cost at ₹16.62 crore, with ₹1.66 crore still to be spent. An architect's certificate from the same period put key finishing and services work at 80% in Building A and 90% in Buildings B and C; the same figures appeared a year later.The same gap between a headline completion number and the documents underneath it appears in FPCE's 192-page report on project extensions. The report describes its cases as samples, not a census.In one Karnataka project, an April 2024 regulatory order recorded the project as 94% complete. A later order cited completion at 76%, relying on progress information that was more than two years old.Upadhyay's objection is to the sequence. "As soon as a promoter wants an extension, they should be asked the hard question, in the first instance only," he says. In Uttar Pradesh, he says, the report found instances where UPRERA granted extensions and carried out site visits afterwards. The project that was 97% complete in 2020 Gajanan Plaza in Mumbai's Borivali shows how long the gap between "almost complete" and delivery can stretch. In January 2020, its promoter told MahaRERA that 97% of the project had been completed onsite. Some buyers had been promised possession as far back as 2012.They had originally booked residential flats before the project was converted to commercial use. By July 2024, 11 complainants across seven units, who had paid a combined ₹1.67 crore, were still before MahaRERA seeking enforcement of orders in their favour.In one proceeding, the regulator recorded "intentional default" in complying with its earlier directions. Gajanan Plaza had originally been registered to finish on Dec 31, 2018. At a February 2025 hearing, the promoter sought time until December 2027, saying Phase 1 was almost complete but financially dependent on a proposed Phase 2.MahaRERA's live project page, as of September 2026, carries a revised completion date of April 30, 2028. The page states that the date includes the four-month extension granted under MahaRERA Order 66/2026, a blanket force majeure extension applied automatically to eligible projects across the state. The Main Issues Extensions are a large part of the system MahaRERA's own annual figures give a sense of how much of its work is now extension work. In 2025-26, the regulator reported 4,204 fresh registrations, 2,488 corrections and 3,687 timeline extensions. That works out to nearly 88 extensions for every 100 fresh registrations. Extensions made up 35.5% of those three categories. That does not mean 88% of new projects were delayed. An extension granted in 2025-26 can relate to a project registered several years earlier.But the figures do indicate how much regulatory activity now involves projects whose original timelines have already changed. Keeping a registration alive can also matter commercially. In four of the 110 projects examined by TOI, promoters explicitly stated that an extension or extension number was needed to continue selling unsold flats. When 100% still isn't possession Among the 110 projects, TOI found at least 12 where a promoter filing described the project or overall construction as at least 95% complete while seeking more time. At least five explicitly claimed 100% completion. At least four made a 95%-plus claim in more than one filing.Shiv Sparsh Phase II is a case in point. Its promoter described the project as 100% complete in three extension filings while also stating that fire and lift NOCs were awaited. The revised deadlines eventually ran through July 2024. A March 2025 architect's certificate again put the main building-work categories at 100%. Its separate common-area entry for "Fire Protection & Fire Safety requirements" carried no completion percentage. At other projects, even the basic progress update may be missing. In May 2026, MahaRERA issued show-cause notices to 8,212 of 33,029 registered housing projects after they failed to file mandatory quarterly progress reports for the January-March quarter by the April 20 deadline. What happens when another deadline is needed? TOI also examined 10 MahaRERA orders issued in 2025 under Section 7(3), which allows the authority, instead of revoking a project's registration, to let it continue subject to conditions. All 10 recorded that the promoter had failed to obtain the 51% majority allottee consent referred to in MahaRERA's procedure. All 10 nevertheless granted further time. That is not, in itself, improper. Across the orders, though, the argument is substantially the same: refusing continuation could stop the project and harm buyers, and the "balance of convenience" therefore favours allowing it to proceed subject to conditions.Upadhyay says the pattern is not confined to Maharashtra. Extensions granted despite the absence of the 51% consent also turn up in FPCE's examination of orders across states. The law allows more than one route The Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act was passed in 2016 and came fully into force on May 1, 2017, after years of demands for a law to discipline a sector in which buyers had little recourse against delay. It is a central statute administered locally: each state and union territory frames its own rules and appoints its own authority. MahaRERA, which began work in 2017, is among the oldest and busiest.RERA does not contain a simple one-extension rule. Section 6 limits extensions granted under it to one year in aggregate. Section 7(3), separately, allows a regulator, instead of revoking registration, to keep it in force subject to conditions. MahaRERA has used this route in post-lapse continuation proceedings.In its 2017 Neelkamal Realtors judgment, the Bombay High Court held that continuation beyond the ordinary extension framework could be considered case by case in exceptional, compelling circumstances. For buyers, another clock runs alongside the regulatory one. Under Section 18, an allottee who stays in a delayed project is entitled to interest for every month of delay until possession. A buyer who withdraws can seek a refund with interest. Upadhyay points to Supreme Court rulings affirming that entitlement and says very little has changed on the ground. The database which is needed Even official estimates put the scale of housing stress high. A government-appointed committee headed by Amitabh Kant cited Indian Banks' Association estimates of around 4.12 lakh stressed dwelling units involving ₹4.08 lakh crore in legacy stalled projects. FPCE reaches a much larger figure: ₹12.44 lakh crore affecting around 27.6 lakh families, by its estimate. The figure is modelled, not a project-by-project count.India does have a count of registered RERA projects. When the Centre launched its Unified RERA Portal in September 2025, 1,51,113 projects had been registered nationally. At the same meeting, however, the government said a nationwide project database should still be prepared. FPCE view And in March 2026, the housing ministry told Parliament that detailed state-level information sought by MPs was "not centrally maintained". However a publicly accessible national record linking the complete journey of a project is currently missing. Upadhyay says the gap is not for want of asking. The issue has been raised in central forums and instructions to furnish the data have been issued, he says, but the data has not followed. Section 8, which allows a project to be taken out of a promoter's hands, should be used far more often, Upadhyay argues, on the reasoning that the prospect of losing the project is what makes a developer move. By the time a project has lost its financial viability, action against the promoter achieves little. "What a RERA registration ought to carry is a definitive guarantee to the ordinary buyer," Upadhyay says.Ten years after RERA came into force, the unresolved question is no longer whether delayed projects sometimes need more time. It is how regulators decide when more time is still a solution, and when it has simply become another deadline.