Apartment owners associations are created to equally distribute the costs of maintaining common areas of apartments among flat owners based on the square footage of ownership.

Any new owner who purchases a flat from an existing owner pays a market-based purchase value as well as stamp duty and registration costs to the Karnataka Government, to legally own the flat.  

Apartment associations are not social clubs where anybody can be invited to be a member / can become a member upon payment of a membership fee.  The membership into the apartment association is tied to the purchase of the flats - only owners can become members and once the flat is sold, one is no longer entitled to be a member of the apartment association. Therefore, one would assume that membership in the apartment association is automatically tied to the purchase / sale of the flat. 

However, there is a new trend among some apartment associations snooty enough to ask for an additional payment to become a "member" of the apartment association.  Exorbitant fees are charged based on bye-laws passed by old owners in the association that are not linked to any additional service / amenity provided by the association.  Instead the money collected as "membership / transfer fee" is utilized by the association for repairs / maintenance of all apartments (including those owned by the old owners thereby subsidizing the maintenance costs payable by all the old owners). 

This seems to be a fraudulent collection of money from new owners based on bye-laws that have been passed by the old owners to benefit themselves.  

The Madras High Court quashed similar tactics used by residential societies in the state of Tamil Nadu (pronounced on 25 May 2023 in WP No.27155 of 2016 and WMP Nos.23325 of 2016 and 23601 of 2022) that clearly held  that charging an amount on a seller or purchaser, while transferring the property is patently a tax akin to stamp duty, which cannot be imposed otherwise without the Authority of Law as mandated under Article 265 of the Constitution of India. Therefore, the demand of 'Transfer Fee' by the petitioner-Association is illegal and amounting to crime."   

The discriminatory and exorbitant fee charged only to new owners impinges on the constitutional right of new owners to enjoy the property purchased after paying all Government levied taxes and to live peacefully in the flats purchased.  

This petition is to request the Karnataka Government to pass laws that prevent apartment associations from charging discriminatory / exorbitant fees to new owners of flats.  If such a fee is charged, the amount levied should not differ from that charged from old owners so that the corpus is equally funded by all owners as that would subsidize the maintenance charged on old owners.