NEW DELHI: The Centre will soon issue an advisory to all state governments and real estate regulators (RERAs) to invoke the “force majeure” provision due to the Covid pandemic. This would bring major relief to builders as they would get extension of timelines for project completion besides exemptions from paying penalties to state agencies for the impacted period.“We shall consider their demand for invoking ‘force majeure’ clause under RERA and will soon announce measures to save the interest of home buyers and protect the sector from adverse impact,” Union housing minister Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted after an emergency meeting of the Central Advisory Council set up under the RERA law.Some of the RERA representatives told TOI that homebuyers will get relief as they won’t have to pay any penalty for delayed payments to builders, which was due during the impacted period. The entire period will be treated as “zero period”. Moreover, regulators won't impose any penalty for not meeting the timelines for projects impacted due to the pandemic. RERA chief of Gurugram bench in Haryana KK Khandelwal said, “The provision to invoke force majeure is there in the law. Covid is an unavoidable crisis and the Centre has invoked Disaster Management Act to deal with this.” The real estate regulation law has this provision to give the promoter additional time to complete a project.