Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA), as the name suggests, is a body of persons meant for the welfare of residents of a society or a complex of buildings, as the case may be. During this COVID19 pandemic when people are required to stay indoors to maintain social distancing, many RWAs have sprung into action to ensure the safety of member residents and to ensure the well-being of their society or block.
While many RWAs are carrying out helpful and important tasks like carrying out sanitisation of buildings, maintaining high levels of hygiene within premises, making arrangements for guards to stay within the societies, creating contribution pools for domestic workers and so on. There are some that are dictating rules during this lockdown that are proving antithetical to the purpose of the lockdown and defeating its purpose and underlying reason.
As reportedly recently, an RWA in Jakkur area of Bengaluru, Karnataka have barred entry of residents into the building who have temperature above 100.4 degrees Celsius. At the entrance itself the temperature is recorded by security guards and if the temperature is found to be high, they are not allowed entry unless a COVID test certificate is produced. A resident told the New Indian Express, “If someone is ill, the first thing the office does is to send them home. How will it work, if we are not allowed inside our own homes? For a normal fever, getting a Covid certificate only puts a lot of pressure and the reports take at least 48 hours to arrive.”
The President of the RWA, however, defended their stand saying, “If a person has fever, he will get a prescription and that is what is being asked for. It is only to take an extra precautionary measure that there are no cases and the entire complex of 238 families is not quarantined. The purpose is to isolate and safeguard all the people.”
There are also instances where buildings have been sealed off completely as a precaution and arrangements have been made for delivery of essential goods. Muralidhar Rao, vice-president, Bengaluru Apartment Federation, told the New Indian Express that the decision of safety of the residents was left to the apartment complexes in coordination with the jurisdictional police.
Such instances gives an impression that RWAs are empowered to make such rules with respect to their respective housing complexes, but do they? RWAs are registered usually under the Societies Registration Act,1860 or if the State has its own law, under that particular law. But, even if they are registered, they are voluntary organizations and do not have statutory powers. While Cooperative Housing Societies have certain powers and functions which have to followed, RWAs are not bound by any such functions statutorily. Hence, while registered housing societies can make rules which the members are bound to follow, rules made by RWAs are not laws and hence do not have a binding effect.
Even rules or bye laws made by housing societies can be challenged in cooperative courts or other courts of law. Similarly, decisions made by RWAs can also be challenged in a court of law for being random and arbitrary or for impinging the rights of the individual residents. In the above mentioned case, where the RWA is not allowing its own residents to enter the premises, is an act that defies the purpose of the lockdown, which is to ensure that people stay at home. By not letting people into their homes, does not just infringe their right to enter their own property and amounts to illegal restraint but also is completely antithetical to lockdown norms. If the rules made by RWAs are not followed, it does not amount to breaking of the law but it could have an effect on ones membership of that association.
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