Karnataka has moved a step closer to replacing two of its oldest property laws. The Karnataka Legislative Assembly passed the Apartment (Ownership and Management) Bill, 2026 on August 21, amid protests from the BJP and JD(S), and the Legislative Council passed it on August 24. The Bill still needs the Governor's assent and a commencement notification from the state government before it becomes enforceable law, so it isn't yet in effect, but its passage through both houses signals the direction Karnataka's apartment regulation is headed in, and it's worth understanding now if you own, or are buying into, an apartment complex anywhere in Bengaluru.
1. Why Karnataka Needed a New Law
The Bill is designed to replace the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act and the Karnataka Ownership of Flats Act, both enacted more than five decades ago, long before Bengaluru's current wave of large-scale, high-rise apartment development existed. The government's stated rationale is straightforward: the existing framework has struggled to keep pace with the city's rapid expansion and the rise of large, complex apartment projects, which has produced repeated disputes over land, common areas, maintenance responsibilities and resident association governance that the old laws were never built to resolve efficiently.
2. The 75% Consent Rule for Redevelopment
The single most consequential provision for existing owners is the redevelopment consent threshold. Under the Bill, at least 75% of apartment owners in a complex must agree before that complex can be redeveloped, a meaningful bar that establishes a clear legal path for ageing buildings, some of which have deteriorated to the point of being structurally unsafe, without requiring unanimous consent that a handful of holdouts could block indefinitely. Owners who don't want to participate aren't left without recourse: the Bill entitles dissenting owners to a settlement of no less than twice the market value of their unit, a safeguard intended to make the redevelopment path fair rather than coercive.
- This matters more with every passing year. Bengaluru's earliest large apartment complexes from the 1990s and 2000s are now well past two decades old, and a clear redevelopment framework gives their owners' associations an actual mechanism to act, rather than years of unresolved deadlock.
- One association per project. The Bill is also understood to move towards a single resident association per project, aiming to reduce the fragmented, sometimes competing association structures that have complicated decision-making in some complexes.
- A dedicated authority replaces civil suits. Complaints and enforcement would go to a competent authority rather than requiring residents to file civil suits, with a first appeal available within 90 days and a second appeal within 30 days of that decision, a considerably faster track than most civil litigation.
3. Municipal Powers Over Unsafe Private Infrastructure
A separate but related provision empowers municipal commissioners and chief officers to intervene where private streets and drains within a complex are in poor condition and pose a risk to public safety, allowing such infrastructure to be taken over and declared public where necessary. For complexes where a builder or an under-resourced association has let internal roads or drainage fall into disrepair, this gives residents a route to municipal intervention that didn't clearly exist before.
4. What It Means If You're Buying an Apartment in Bengaluru Now
For anyone buying into a new apartment project today, this Bill matters less for its redevelopment clause, since a new project is decades away from that question, and more for the broader legal clarity it brings to how resident associations are formed, how common areas are governed and how disputes get resolved. A single, modern legal framework replacing two 50-year-old Acts is generally a positive for the long-term governance of any large gated community, including newer developments still under construction or in the pre-launch stage. As with any legislation still awaiting the Governor's assent, buyers should track the Bill's final notified form and effective date rather than treat any provision described here as settled law.
The Bottom Line
Karnataka's Apartment Bill 2026 is the state's first serious attempt in decades to modernise how apartment ownership, common areas and redevelopment are governed, with the 75% consent rule for redevelopment as its centrepiece. Whether you own a unit in an older complex or are evaluating a new one, it's worth following as it moves toward the Governor's assent. Talk to our team if you'd like help thinking through what this means for a specific Bengaluru property.
