Bengaluru’s apartment owners are waiting for the Karnataka Apartment Ownership and Management Bill, 2026, to receive the governor’s assent, but the debate around the legislation shows that the city’s housing problem is not limited to construction or sale. It also concerns what residents actually own after they receive possession, who controls common areas, and which legal framework can govern thousands of vertically organised communities.
A Bangalore Apartments Federation delegation met Karnataka governor Thaawar Chand Gehlot on Friday and submitted a representation seeking action on the bill, which has been passed by the Karnataka legislature. The federation said the proposed law would strengthen apartment ownership, protect common areas and establish more accountable community governance.
The proposed legislation matters because an apartment is not simply a private unit enclosed by four walls. It is part of a shared physical and administrative system that includes land, corridors, lifts, access roads, recreational spaces and other common facilities. The ownership and management of those shared assets determine how a building is maintained, how decisions are made and whether residents can recover unpaid charges or challenge disputed control.
Satish Mallya, president of the Bangalore Apartments Federation, said apartment ownership should include meaningful rights over the common property shared by all owners. His formulation captures the central institutional question raised by the bill: whether the individual purchase of a flat is matched by legally enforceable rights in the larger property of which that flat is a part.
The uncertainty is particularly significant because different legal and administrative frameworks appear to overlap. Some home-buyer associations cited the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, or RERA, which requires a promoter to execute registered conveyance and transfer undivided proportionate title in common areas to the association of allottees or the competent authority, as applicable. Their concern, however, is not only what the law requires on paper but whether the transfer takes place on time and can be enforced.
Mallya also pointed to the position of older apartment complexes. He cited Brigade Millennium, where he lives, as an example of a community registered under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act. For such apartments, he said the proposed law’s automatic recognition of an apartment association would be a major advantage. He added that several courts have effectively rejected the legitimacy of using the Societies Registration Act as the legal basis for apartment communities.
This creates a transition problem for Bengaluru’s existing housing stock. New projects may be structured around current real-estate regulation, but older complexes continue to operate under arrangements that residents and their associations may regard as legally uncertain. If the association’s status is unclear, questions about signing contracts, managing facilities, collecting maintenance, representing owners and dealing with land or common-area rights can become more difficult.
According to Mallya, the bill would clarify that the land and common areas of an apartment complex collectively belong to all owners in proportion to their undivided rights. He also said it would give the association the legitimate authority to manage, maintain and administer the property, along with statutory rights to assess and recover maintenance charges.
Those provisions address a practical problem faced by apartment communities: shared infrastructure requires shared expenditure, but collection depends on a recognised authority and a clear legal basis. A residential complex can have functioning lifts, water systems, security arrangements, fire-safety equipment and other common facilities only if the association can make decisions and recover the costs of maintaining them. The supplied report does not establish how the bill would operate in every such dispute, but it indicates that maintenance recovery is one of the provisions residents consider significant.
At the same time, the proposed law has drawn criticism from the Karnataka Home Buyers Forum. Dhananjaya Padmanabhachar, the forum’s convener, said the bill omits essential provisions for transferring common areas to registered associations. He argued that this omission contradicts the requirements set out under RERA.
That disagreement is not a minor drafting issue. The transfer of common areas determines whether apartment owners receive an enforceable interest in the shared property or remain dependent on incomplete handovers and uncertain documentation. It also raises a question about how the proposed state law would interact with the obligations already associated with RERA. The report records the conflict but does not include the text of the bill or an official response clarifying how the two frameworks are intended to work together.
The debate therefore has two connected dimensions. The first is recognition: whether apartment associations, especially those in older developments, have a clear legal identity. The second is transfer: whether land and common areas are formally conveyed to the body representing apartment owners. Recognition without transfer could leave ownership questions unresolved. Transfer without an effective association could make management and maintenance difficult. The competing statements in the report show why residents are examining both issues together.
Bengaluru’s apartment expansion has also made this a governance issue rather than a matter affecting only individual buyers. Once a city’s residents live in large, privately managed communities, the quality of everyday urban life depends partly on the administration of those developments. Internal roads, shared services, waste arrangements, access systems and building maintenance may be managed at the community level, but failures can affect the wider functioning of neighbourhoods.
The bill’s importance, as described by apartment-owner representatives, lies in its potential to establish a common legal basis for that internal governance. Yet the home-buyers forum’s criticism shows that legal recognition alone may not settle the ownership chain. The final effectiveness of the framework would depend on the relationship between the statute, registered documents, promoter obligations and the operation of apartment associations.
The issue also illustrates a broader weakness in housing delivery: possession of a dwelling and completion of ownership are not always the same event. A buyer may receive access to a flat while questions concerning land, common areas, association registration and maintenance authority remain unsettled. These questions may surface only when a community needs to undertake major repairs, challenge a promoter, enforce payment or establish who has authority over shared facilities.
The immediate institutional milestone is the governor’s decision on the bill. Until assent and subsequent implementation steps, residents and associations remain dependent on the existing legal and administrative arrangements described in the report. The governor’s office has not been quoted in the supplied material, and the report does not state whether the bill has received assent or identify any rules, procedures or implementation timeline that would follow.
What the current debate establishes is the demand for a clearer legal foundation for apartment ownership and management in Karnataka. What remains unresolved is whether the proposed legislation adequately addresses the transfer of common areas and how it will align with RERA obligations. For Bengaluru’s apartment residents, the significance of KAOMA 2026 will ultimately be measured not only by its passage but by whether ownership, association authority and maintenance enforcement become workable at the level of individual housing communities.
