RERA is a single central act, but it is administered by a separate authority in every state — and those authorities have diverged enough that a developer who knows one state's rules cannot assume they apply in the next. For a single-state builder, that's manageable. For anyone expanding across state lines, the differences in quarterly reporting, certification, and penalties are exactly the sort of thing that produces an avoidable notice. This guide compares three of the most active regimes — Maharashtra's MahaRERA, Gujarat's GujRERA, and Karnataka RERA — as they stand in 2026, citing each authority's own rules where possible. Treat it as an orientation, not legal advice; verify the live position on each official portal before you act.
Why do per-state differences matter?
The spine of RERA is national — register before marketing, ring-fence buyers' money in a project account, disclose honestly and deliver, keep progress updated. But the implementation details that consume a developer's time are set per state: which form the quarterly update takes, how soon after quarter-end it's due, who has to certify it, and what happens when you're late. Those are precisely the variables that differ across Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, and getting them wrong in a new state is a common, expensive mistake.
MahaRERA: how tight is Maharashtra's regime?
Maharashtra runs the most demanding of the three reporting regimes. Under MahaRERA's Order No. 18/2021, issued under Section 11 of the Act read with Rule 20 of the state rules, registered projects must file quarterly progress reports on a financial-quarter basis — due within 7 days of each quarter's end, which works out to the 7th of July, October, January and April. ↗ The quarterly filing is certified: it carries the CA, architect and engineer forms (Forms 1, 2 and 3), with an annual statement of accounts (Form 5) added in the relevant quarter.
MahaRERA has also gone further than its peers on transparency. In April 2024 it launched a project grading system that grades registered projects on a scale through its MahaCRITI platform, generated periodically from the same progress data developers file. The practical effect is that in Maharashtra, the quarterly filing isn't just a compliance box — it feeds a public grade, so the cost of sloppy or late reporting is reputational as well as regulatory. Maharashtra has separately clarified registration thresholds — for instance, exempting very small projects of eight or fewer units — but the core message for an active developer is that MahaRERA expects timely, certified, frequent reporting and increasingly publicises who delivers it.
GujRERA: what changed with self-reported Form 8 in 2025?
Gujarat moved in a notably different direction. Under a GujRERA amendment regulation effective 1 January 2025, the quarterly project progress report is now filed in a single new Form 8 — and, importantly, Form 8 replaces the earlier set of separate Forms (1, 2 and 3). ↗ The significance is that developers can now self-report routine quarterly progress directly, rather than obtaining CA, architect and engineer certifications for every routine update. Form 8 asks for estimated costs, completion timelines, and development photographs.
This is a deliberate simplification of the recurring burden, but it comes with a caveat worth internalising: professional certification remains mandatory where it matters most — specifically for withdrawing funds from the project's RERA bank account. So Gujarat has lightened the routine reporting while keeping the financial-control certifications intact. Gujarat's regulations also provide for late or back-dated filing on payment of a late fee, so a missed quarter is recoverable rather than fatal — though the prudent reading is to file on time rather than rely on that. (We've deliberately not quoted a specific Gujarat late-fee figure or exact deadline date here, because we couldn't confirm them against the official source at the time of writing — check the GujRERA portal for the current numbers.)
Karnataka RERA: what did the 2025 delay-fee ruling change?
Karnataka's regime sits between the two on reporting and carries the most significant recent legal twist. Its quarterly updates run through certificate forms — a CA certificate (Form 4), an architect certificate (Form 5) and an engineer certificate (Form 6) for the quarterly update, plus an annual audit report (Form 7) — so, like Maharashtra and unlike Gujarat's new approach, Karnataka still expects professional certification on the routine quarterly filing.
The twist is on penalties. A Karnataka RERA circular dated 3 September 2020 had set the quarterly update due 15 days after quarter-end and imposed a "delay fee" — ₹10,000 for delays up to a month and ₹20,000 per month beyond that. In September 2025, the Karnataka High Court quashed that circular. ↗ The court held that the RERA Act contemplates penalty or interest, not a separately-invented "delay fee," and that such a fee requires explicit statutory backing it didn't have. For developers, the immediate effect is that Karnataka's specific monetary delay-fee mechanism is, as of late 2025, struck down and its penalty posture for late quarterly filing is legally unsettled — which is not the same as saying late filing is now free, since the underlying penalty and interest provisions of the Act remain. It's a live area to watch rather than a settled rule, and a clear illustration of why "what's the fine for a late update" can have a different answer in each state, and even change mid-year.
What is the cross-state developer's real problem?
Put the three side by side and the divergences that matter jump out. Reporting cadence differs — MahaRERA wants the filing within 7 days of quarter-end, Karnataka's framework said 15. The certification model differs most of all: Maharashtra and Karnataka still require separate CA, architect and engineer certificates on the quarterly update, while Gujarat, from January 2025, lets developers self-report routine progress through a single Form 8 and reserves professional certificates mainly for fund withdrawal. And the penalty posture differs and shifts — Maharashtra ties reporting to a public grade, Gujarat allows late filing on a fee, and Karnataka's delay-fee mechanism was just struck down.
| MahaRERA | GujRERA | Karnataka RERA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reporting cadence | Within 7 days of quarter-end | Form 8, from Jan 2025 | Was 15 days of quarter-end |
| Certification | CA + architect + engineer (Forms 1/2/3) | Self-report; cert for fund withdrawal | CA + architect + engineer (Forms 4/5/6) |
| Penalty posture | Tied to public project grade | Late filing on a fee | Delay-fee struck down, Sept 2025 |
For a developer operating in more than one of these states, the only safe operating assumption is that the quarterly rhythm, the people who must sign it, and the consequence of missing it are all state-specific. Build your process around the national constants — register first, keep the project account clean, file progress, disclose and deliver — and treat the cadence, certification, and penalty details as a per-state layer you confirm on each authority's portal.
How do you run a practical RERA compliance calendar?
The way developers stay ahead of this is to stop treating RERA as an event and run it as a calendar. For each project, anchor three recurring rhythms. The project-start rhythm: register before any marketing, open the project bank account, and disclose the particulars accurately — done once, correctly. The quarterly rhythm: the progress update, in that state's form, by that state's deadline, with that state's certifications — the filing that most often slips, and the one a simple reminder system pays for itself on. And the per-booking rhythm: generating allotment letters, demand notes, receipts and possession letters from the booking record so they always agree with what's registered.
Mapped across states, that means a developer with projects in Maharashtra and Gujarat is tracking a 7th-of-the-month certified MahaRERA filing that feeds a public grade, and a self-reported Gujarat Form 8 on its own schedule — two different rhythms that can't be run from one mental model. Writing the actual deadlines and form requirements for each project into one calendar, rather than carrying them in your head, is the single highest-leverage compliance habit, because every penalty regime above punishes the missed deadline, not the misunderstood rule.
Where does a system help?
None of this requires full-time compliance staff for a builder running a few projects — it requires the project data, the documents, and the deadlines to live in one place. A CRM that generates buyer documents from the booking record keeps them consistent with what's filed, and one that surfaces each project's per-state filing deadline turns the quarterly rhythm from a thing you remember into a thing the system reminds you of. The broader lead-to-possession workflow this sits within, including RERA document generation, is covered in our lead-to-possession process automation guide; if you're still choosing software, our framework for evaluating a real estate CRM in India treats RERA-readiness as a first-class criterion. The rules will keep diverging by state and shifting year to year — as Karnataka's 2025 ruling shows — so the durable advantage isn't memorising today's numbers; it's running a process disciplined enough that adapting to each state, and each change, is routine.