Can a Member Withdraw Consent Already Given for Redevelopment?

Once you have validly given your consent to a redevelopment decision — by voting for the resolution in a properly convened meeting and signing the registered agreement for your new flat — you generally cannot withdraw that consent later just to stall the project or to bargain privately for a better deal. Under Section 14 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA), allottees are expressly bound by the consent they have given, and the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court of India have repeatedly held that a small group cannot hold an entire cooperative housing society to ransom after the required majority has lawfully approved redevelopment. Consent can be questioned only on narrow, specific grounds — fraud, a material change in the agreed terms, coercion, or a serious breach of legal procedure — and even then through the correct forum, not by a unilateral change of mind. This page is general legal information, not legal advice; consult a lawyer about your own facts.

What "consent" actually means in a society redevelopment

Before you can judge whether consent may be withdrawn, it helps to see that "consent" in a Mumbai redevelopment is not one signature but a chain of decisions. An allottee is the person to whom the new flat is to be allotted — in a redevelopment, that is you, the existing member. Your consent is given at more than one stage:

• The general body resolution — where the members, in a Special General Body Meeting, vote to appoint a developer and approve the Development Agreement (DA), the contract between the society and the builder.
• The individual PAAA — the Permanent Alternate Accommodation Agreement, the personal contract each member signs with the developer setting out the new carpet area, rent during construction, corpus, and timeline.

Both the DA and the PAAA must be registered under Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908. Once your vote is recorded and your PAAA is registered, your consent is not a casual promise — it is a documented, registered legal act. That is a large part of why it cannot simply be taken back.

The core principle: RERA Section 14 binds you to the consent you give

Section 14 of RERA is best known for protecting buyers from a builder quietly altering the building: sanctioned plans and specifications cannot be changed without the consent of at least two-thirds of the allottees. But the same section works in the other direction too — it makes clear that allottees are bound by the consent they have given. Consent is therefore a two-way street. It shields you from unilateral changes by the developer, and it equally holds you to what you agreed. You cannot accept the package, let the project start on the strength of your agreement, and then treat your consent as reversible whenever it suits you. The related principle — that changes to the sanctioned plan themselves need fresh two-thirds consent — is covered in our explainer on why changing sanctioned plans needs consent.

How the courts have reasoned

Two ideas run through the case law. The first is the old principle that a person cannot "approbate and reprobate" — you cannot accept the benefit of a decision and then reject it when it no longer suits you. If you signed the consent form, took the transit rent, or voted at the meeting, you cannot later say you were never bound.

The second is that in a cooperative society the validly expressed will of the majority binds the minority. The Bombay High Court, in a series of redevelopment disputes, has declined to let a handful of dissenting members stall a project that the requisite majority approved after following due process. The Supreme Court of India has similarly emphasised that cooperative societies run on democratic decision-making, so a member who is outvoted must ordinarily abide by the collective decision. The courts' concern is practical: a redevelopment runs for years, costs crores of rupees, and needs every flat vacated before demolition. If any one member could withdraw consent at any stage, no project would ever finish, and obstruction would become a bargaining weapon to extract a private windfall at every other family's cost.

Why the 79A process makes your consent hard to undo

Maharashtra tightened the way redevelopment consent is obtained through the directive issued under Section 79A of the Maharashtra Cooperative Societies (MCS) Act, 1960, dated 4 July 2019. Section 79A lets the State issue binding directions to societies, and this directive lays down exactly how the developer must be chosen. The key safeguards are:

• A quorum of two-thirds of members at the Special General Body Meeting where the developer is selected.
• Approval by not less than 51% of the total membership — a real majority of everyone on the rolls, not just of those present.
• An authorised officer of the Registrar physically present at the selection meeting, which must be video-recorded.
• A 20% bank guarantee from the developer, registration of the DA and PAAA, and no committee member or their relative acting as the developer.

Because your consent is given in a video-recorded meeting supervised by a government officer and then registered, it is very difficult to later claim you never agreed, or that you were tricked in the room. That evidentiary strength is deliberate. You can read the threshold rule in detail on our 51% consent rule page, and the full sequence on the Section 79A redevelopment process guide.

When can consent legitimately be withdrawn or set aside?

The rule against arbitrary withdrawal is not absolute. Consent can be questioned when it was never truly valid, or when the basis on which it was given has fundamentally changed. Courts and MahaRERA look at the substance, not just the signature. The table below separates grounds that usually carry weight from objections that usually do not.

Fraud, material change and procedural breach, in plain words

Fraud or misrepresentation: If the developer or committee lied about the extra area, the rent, the corpus or the timeline to get your signature, the consent was never freely and honestly given. Where there was a dishonest intention from the very start, that can amount to cheating under Section 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 — the provision that replaced the old Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. Proven fraud can undo the consent it produced.

Material change in the terms: You consented to a specific package. If that package is quietly changed — a smaller flat, a reduced payout, a new builder substituted, or an altered sanctioned plan — your original consent does not automatically stretch to cover the new terms. As Section 14 of RERA makes plain, changes to the sanctioned plans need fresh consent of at least two-thirds of allottees; a fresh decision of the general body is generally required.

Procedural breach: The MCS Act, your registered bye-laws and the 79A directive set out how notices are issued, how the meeting is held, how votes are counted and how the agreement is executed. If those steps were skipped, the whole resolution may be open to challenge — not just one person's consent. Our guide to understanding your society bye-laws explains these steps in everyday language.

Withdrawing consent is not the same as refusing to vacate

Some members try to stall by simply refusing to hand over their flat, even after a valid decision. That is not "withdrawing consent" in any legal sense — it is obstruction. Where a valid majority decision exists and the procedure was clean, the Co-operative Court, the Registrar or MahaRERA can direct a member to vacate so the approved project can proceed, and continued obstruction can expose that member to costs. If your real grievance is genuine — unfair terms or a broken promise — the far stronger path is to raise that specific ground through the correct forum, not to hold the building hostage.

Which forum decides a consent dispute?

Sending your objection to the right place matters as much as the objection itself. In broad terms:

Filing in the wrong forum wastes months and can get your case dismissed on a technicality, so identify the real nature of your grievance first.

What this means for your society

For managing committees: your best defence against a later withdrawal claim is watertight process. Proper written notice, a genuine two-thirds quorum, the Registrar's officer present, a video recording, clearly recorded votes and minutes, and a registered DA and PAAA leave a dissenter little room to argue that consent was invalid. Weak procedure is precisely what gives a member a legitimate opening. Before you lock in a builder, compare the offers on the table side by side with our offer comparison tool, and get the draft agreement checked — our tender and agreement review catches the red-flag clauses that later grow into consent disputes.

For individual members: if you feel misled or the terms have genuinely changed, do not simply refuse to cooperate. Pin down your specific ground — fraud, a real change in terms, coercion, or a procedural gap — gather the meeting record and your PAAA, and take proper legal advice on the right forum. A precise objection raised correctly is far more effective than obstruction, which the law rarely rewards. If you are weighing redevelopment for your building, you can register your society for a plain-language view from our team.