By S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors · Published 24 October 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice: see our disclaimer
A person who believes a developer registered a project on land that actually belongs to them has an obvious instinct: go to RERA and get the registration cancelled. It feels like the fastest route to stopping a project built on what they consider to be their own property. The Telangana Real Estate Appellate Tribunal closed that route in June 2026, holding that a land claimant who is not an allottee generally has no standing to raise that challenge before a RERA authority at all.
The ruling is a reminder that RERA's complaint mechanism is built around a specific kind of grievance, a buyer's or allottee's stake in how a registered project performs, and not around resolving who actually owns the ground it sits on. Getting that distinction right before filing determines whether a claimant spends months in the wrong forum.
What the case was about
In N.L. Ravi Shankar & Anr. v. The Registrar, TG Real Estate Regulatory Authority (T.A. No. 65 of 2025), the appellants claimed ownership of land in Gopanpally village, Ranga Reddy district, and asked the Telangana RERA Registry to cancel the registration of Aparna Infra Housing's 'Aparna Sunstone' project on that land, alleging the developer had obtained the registration using fraudulent documents.
The Registry returned the complaint on 24 October 2025, holding that the dispute involved questions of title and ownership that fell outside its jurisdiction. The appellants then appealed under Section 44 of the Act. On 8 June 2026, the Appellate Tribunal dismissed the appeal and upheld the Registry's order, reported as 2026 LLBiz REAT (TS) 37.
Nothing in the reported facts suggests the appellants held any contractual relationship with Aparna Infra Housing or had booked a unit in the project. Their claim ran entirely to the land itself, which is precisely why the Registry and then the Tribunal treated the complaint as misdirected rather than merely weak on the facts.
Why a land claimant is not an 'aggrieved person' by that fact alone
Section 31(1) of the RERA Act lets 'any aggrieved person' file a complaint with the authority or the adjudicating officer against contraventions of the Act or the rules and regulations made under it. The Tribunal's reasoning in Aparna Sunstone was that the appellants could not be treated as aggrieved persons for this purpose: they were not allottees, had no contractual relationship with the project, and their grievance was not about how the project was being run but about who owned the land underneath it.
This tracks how other RERA authorities have read the same phrase. A 2024 Telangana RERA order in a matter involving the Ashrita Group reached a similar conclusion, rejecting a complaint from someone who was neither an allottee, a real estate agent, nor a landowner with a recognised stake in the project, on the basis that only an aggrieved party, in the sense the Act intends, can approach the authority under Section 31.
Two consecutive rulings taking the same position, two years apart, make this look less like an outcome tied to one tribunal's reading of an unusual set of facts and more like a settled approach within the Telangana forum to who gets to invoke Section 31 in the first place. A claimant assessing whether to file a RERA complaint at all should weigh that consistency carefully before assuming a differently framed version of the same grievance will somehow fare better the second time around.
Registration is not a finding on title
A project's RERA registration proceeds on the developer's declared title to the land, along with the other disclosures the Act requires, rather than on any independent adjudication of who actually owns that land. The authority registering a project is not holding, and does not purport to hold, that the developer's title is beyond dispute. It follows that cancelling a registration is not the natural remedy for a title dispute, and a competing ownership claim does not become a RERA-cognisable grievance simply because the claimant frames it as a challenge to the registration rather than a straightforward title suit.
This matters for how a claimant should think about strategy. Filing with RERA in the hope of stopping the project quickly, rather than filing the civil suit the dispute actually calls for, risks losing time on a forum that was never going to decide the real question, while the project continues to be built and sold to buyers in the meantime.
Alleging fraud does not change the forum
The appellants in Aparna Sunstone did not merely assert a competing title; they alleged the developer had obtained the registration itself using fraudulent documents. That allegation did not move the needle. The Tribunal's approach treated the fraud claim as still resting on an underlying title dispute, who actually owned the land, and held that dressing a title dispute up as a fraud allegation against the registration does not convert it into something RERA is equipped to decide.
A claimant tempted to lean on a fraud allegation to get a RERA forum to engage with a title question should expect the same redirection to the civil court that a bare ownership claim would receive. The right place to prove that documents relied on for registration were fraudulent is the forum actually deciding the title dispute, where evidence on ownership and the authenticity of documents can be properly tested.
There is a narrower version of a fraud allegation that RERA authorities do engage with directly: a developer misrepresenting project specifications, timelines, or sanctioned plans to allottees. That is squarely within the regulatory grievance RERA exists to address. The distinction is between fraud that affects an allottee's bargain with the developer, which RERA will look at, and fraud alleged in support of a third party's ownership claim over the land itself, which it will not.
What a land claimant should do instead
A person disputing a developer's title over land under a registered project should file, or continue, the civil suit over title promptly rather than routing the grievance through a RERA complaint. Time spent pursuing the RERA route first, only to have it returned or dismissed for want of standing, is time the project continues to be marketed and built out, which can make any eventual relief harder to give practical effect to.
Parallel proceedings are possible and sometimes sensible: a title suit addressing ownership, run alongside whatever interim relief a civil court is prepared to grant on the land itself, is a more direct route to protecting the claimant's position than a RERA complaint that the authority is likely to find it has no jurisdiction to entertain.
A claimant with a genuinely strong title case also has an interest in moving quickly for its own sake, since a developer who continues to sell units while a title dispute is pending creates a widening group of allottees whose interests a court will have to weigh against the claimant's once ownership is finally decided. Delay does not just cost the claimant time, it changes the practical shape of whatever relief a court can realistically give.
What this means for buyers and developers
For a buyer in a project facing this kind of challenge, the practical takeaway is that a title dispute over the underlying land, by itself, is not a reason to expect RERA to intervene or cancel the registration, though it remains a risk worth asking about before booking a unit in a project where ownership is contested. A pending title suit against the developer, even one that will not touch the RERA registration, is still relevant information for a buyer deciding whether to commit funds to a project.
For a developer, the ruling confirms that a RERA registration is not vulnerable to collateral attack by a third-party land claimant simply filing a complaint dressed up as a regulatory grievance. That is useful protection against a nuisance complaint aimed at stalling a project, but it is no substitute for having clean, defensible title in the first place, since the title dispute itself proceeds unaffected in the civil court and can still end in an order that affects the project regardless of what RERA does or does not do with the registration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can someone claiming to own the land under a registered RERA project get that registration cancelled through RERA?
Generally no, unless they are also an allottee or otherwise fit within what RERA treats as an aggrieved person. The Telangana Appellate Tribunal held in the Aparna Sunstone matter that a land claimant who is not an allottee lacks standing to challenge a registration on title grounds, and that the dispute belongs before a civil court.
Does alleging that the developer used fraudulent documents to register the project change the answer?
Not on its own. The Tribunal treated a fraud allegation resting on an underlying title dispute as still a title dispute, and held that framing it as a fraud claim against the registration does not convert it into something a RERA authority or tribunal can decide.
Does RERA registration mean the authority has confirmed the developer's title to the land?
No. Registration proceeds on the developer's declared title and other disclosures the Act requires, not on an independent adjudication of ownership. A registered project can still be sitting on land whose title is genuinely disputed in a separate civil proceeding, and the registration itself says nothing about who the court will eventually find owns that land.
Who counts as an 'aggrieved person' able to file a RERA complaint under Section 31?
RERA authorities have generally read this as covering allottees and others with a direct stake in how a registered project performs, such as a real estate agent regulated under the Act, rather than anyone who merely asserts some interest in the land or the project generally.
What should a land claimant do instead of filing a RERA complaint?
File or pursue a civil suit over title without delay, since that is the forum equipped to decide ownership and test the authenticity of documents. Waiting on a RERA complaint that is likely to be returned for want of jurisdiction only loses time while the project continues to be built and sold.
References & Further Reading
The provisions and rulings below were relied on for this guide. The position can change with amendments and later decisions, so check the current text and the latest case law before acting on any of it.
- Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, Section 31(1) and Section 44
- N.L. Ravi Shankar & Anr. v. The Registrar, TG Real Estate Regulatory Authority, T.A. No. 65 of 2025, Telangana Real Estate Appellate Tribunal (2026 LLBiz REAT (TS) 37, decided 8 June 2026)
- Ashrita Group matter, Telangana State Real Estate Regulatory Authority order (2024)