TL;DR: You have a statutory right to inspect your RWA’s accounts, minutes, member register, vendor contracts and sinking fund ledger, but which statute governs that right depends on whether your association is registered under a state cooperative societies act, an apartment ownership act, or the Societies Registration Act 1860. Find that answer first on your state Registrar’s portal, because it decides which forum you approach next. Cash collections and unreceipted fines are the loudest signal of diversion, and an RWA cannot invent a penalty that was never resolved by the general body. The escalation ladder runs from a written inspection request to a requisitioned special meeting, to a Registrar complaint seeking an inquiry and a special audit, and only then to RERA, a criminal complaint, or a civil injunction.
On this page
- Find out which statute your association is registered under
- Your right to inspect records as a member
- The annual general meeting, the audit, and the auditor
- The documents you can demand, one by one
- Why cash and unreceipted fines are the biggest red flag
- Can an rwa even levy a fine
- Step one: send a written inspection request under the bye-laws
- Step two: requisition a special general body meeting
- Step three: complain to the registrar for an inquiry and a special audit
- Step four: rera, the criminal complaint, and the civil injunction
- Does rti apply to your rwa
- The consumer forum question
- Frequently asked questions
Find out which statute your association is registered under
Before you write a single email, find out which law your RWA is actually registered under. Every remedy in this piece, who you complain to, what powers that authority has, whether a criminal complaint even makes sense, flows from that one fact.
In most Indian states an apartment complex sets up its residents’ body one of three ways: as a cooperative housing society under the state’s cooperative societies act, the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act 1960 being the best known example; as an apartment owners’ association under a dedicated apartment ownership act, such as the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act 1972 or the Haryana Apartment Ownership Act 1983; or, sometimes by default, as a plain society under the Societies Registration Act 1860 or the state’s own version of it.
These are not interchangeable labels. A cooperative housing society answers to the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, is bound by detailed statutory bye-laws on audits, funds and inspection rights, and the Registrar has real supervisory teeth, including the power to order an inquiry and a special audit. An apartment owners’ association under an apartment ownership act answers to a different registering authority with a narrower set of supervisory powers, and its rulebook is the declaration and bye-laws filed at formation, not a state-wide cooperative code. A society registered under the Societies Registration Act 1860 is the weakest of the three for a member seeking transparency: that Act is thin on financial disclosure duties, and the state Registrar of Societies (a different office from the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, even though both get called “the Registrar”) has comparatively limited power to intervene in internal financial disputes.
Karnataka shows how much this confusion costs residents. Many Bengaluru apartment complexes were registered under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act 1960 by builders who wanted a quick, cheap incorporation, even though the Karnataka High Court has repeatedly held that a residential apartment association should be formed under the Karnataka Apartment Ownership Act 1972. An association sitting under the wrong Act can find itself pursuing a Registrar who does not have the financial-inquiry powers a cooperative housing society’s Registrar would have.
How to check. Every state Registrar of Cooperative Societies runs a portal where you can search by society name or registration number and pull the registration certificate, the year of registration, and often the bye-laws on file. If your RWA cannot produce a registration number and a copy of its bye-laws on request, that is itself a governance failure, and it may mean the entity you are paying maintenance to has never registered under any statute at all, which changes your remedies again. The underlying statute decides everything downstream, so establish it first and do not proceed on an assumption.
Your right to inspect records as a member
Once you know your governing statute, the inspection right itself is close to universal across the cooperative and apartment-ownership frameworks, even though the section numbers differ state to state.
Under the Maharashtra Co-operative Societies Act 1960, a member can inspect the Act, the rules, the bye-laws, the audited balance sheet, the profit and loss account, the list of committee members, and the register of members, and can obtain copies on payment of the prescribed fee, generally within a month of request. The Maharashtra model bye-laws (bye-law 154B) list the specific registers a member can walk in and inspect during office hours, including the minutes book. Gujarat’s Cooperative Societies Act gives an almost identical right under its own numbering, and Karnataka’s cooperative and apartment frameworks recognise the same underlying principle even where the exact provision differs.
The pattern across states is consistent enough to state plainly: you are entitled to inspect financial and governance records at the society’s office during reasonable hours, and the committee cannot refuse on the ground that the information is “confidential.” A managing committee holds these records in trust for the members who elected it, not as a private file. If your RWA is registered under an apartment ownership act, the equivalent right usually sits in the association’s own bye-laws.
Two limits are worth naming. The right is usually to inspect and take copies, not to walk out with the original ledger, and some Acts let the society charge a modest, rule-capped copying fee. Neither is a basis to stonewall you indefinitely; both are procedural objections, not substantive ones.
The annual general meeting, the audit, and the auditor
Every registered cooperative housing society and most apartment associations are required to hold an annual general meeting within a fixed window after the financial year closes, commonly six months, at which the audited accounts for the year must be placed before the members. This is not a courtesy. It is the mechanism by which the year’s income and expenditure, the balance sheet, and the auditor’s report are supposed to reach every member, whether or not you individually asked for them.
A registered society must have its accounts audited annually by a qualified auditor, typically drawn from a panel the Registrar’s office maintains or approves, not one the treasurer hired informally. The audited balance sheet and profit and loss account, once adopted at the AGM, become part of the record you can inspect under the previous section. If your RWA has not held an AGM in the last financial year, has not circulated audited accounts, or cannot name its current statutory auditor, that is your first concrete governance failure to put in writing.
Watch for a specific evasion: a committee that holds an “annual meeting” but never puts the audited statements on the agenda, or circulates a one-page summary instead of the full receipts and payments account, income and expenditure statement, and balance sheet. A summary is not a substitute for the statutory accounts, and minutes recording “accounts presented and approved” without the actual statements attached are close to worthless as a transparency record.
The documents you can demand, one by one
Ask for these by name, not in general terms; a vague request is easier for a committee to slow-walk.
Member register. The list of flat owners, unit numbers, and the date each became a member. This tells you who can vote, requisition a meeting, or co-sign a Registrar complaint, and it is the first document a manipulated quorum count depends on.
Minutes book. Every committee and general body meeting must be minuted. Read the minutes for the meeting at which any contract, fine schedule, or fee hike was supposedly “approved.” No minute, no valid decision.
Receipts and payments account. The cash-basis record of every rupee that actually moved through the society’s bank and cash accounts, showing real outflows, not budgeted ones.
Income and expenditure statement. The accrual-basis statement of income earned against expenses incurred, which tells you whether the society is running a genuine surplus or deficit.
Balance sheet. The year-end snapshot of assets, liabilities, reserves and fund balances, including the sinking fund and repair fund carried forward.
Bank statements. Ask for every account the society operates, not just the main one. A second account you were never told about is a common early sign of diversion.
Vendor contracts and tender documents. The signed agreements with housekeeping, security, lift maintenance, landscaping, and any repair contractor. Ask specifically whether a vendor was engaged without the tender process the bye-laws require above a threshold value.
Sinking fund ledger. A separate ledger for sinking fund contributions and withdrawals. The sinking fund is meant for major long-term repairs, not routine maintenance shortfalls, and diverting it without the general body’s permission is a bye-law violation in most cooperative frameworks. If your own building has a genuine structural hazard sitting unrepaired while the sinking fund’s whereabouts are unclear, the tenant or resident side of that repair problem, including the municipal dangerous-structure route, is covered in what to do when your rented house is unsafe.
| Document you want | Your legal basis | Who to ask | If refused |
|---|---|---|---|
| Member register | Member’s inspection right under the state cooperative or apartment ownership act | Secretary or managing committee | Written inspection request, then Registrar complaint |
| Minutes book | Same inspection right, plus bye-laws on meeting records | Secretary | Written inspection request citing the specific bye-law |
| Receipts and payments account | Statutory duty to maintain and disclose accounts | Treasurer or committee | Registrar complaint for failure to furnish accounts |
| Income and expenditure statement | Same as above, tied to the AGM requirement | Treasurer or committee | Registrar complaint, cite absence of AGM circulation |
| Balance sheet | Statutory audit and disclosure requirement | Treasurer, or the appointed statutory auditor | Registrar complaint seeking a special audit |
| Bank statements | Member’s right to verify accounts underlying the balance sheet | Treasurer, with a specific written request | Registrar inquiry request under the Act |
| Vendor contracts and tenders | Bye-law tender and procurement requirements | Secretary or committee | Registrar complaint alleging bye-law breach |
| Sinking fund ledger | Statutory sinking fund rules under the cooperative or apartment framework | Treasurer or committee | Special audit request naming the fund specifically |
Send the request in writing every time, even for something as basic as the member register; a verbal refusal leaves you nothing to attach to an escalation letter.
Why cash and unreceipted fines are the biggest red flag
If there is one pattern worth training your eye on before anything else, it is cash. A society that collects maintenance, parking charges, or fines in cash, without an official receipt book, without depositing that cash promptly into the society’s bank account, and without recording it against a specific member’s ledger, has created a gap that is trivially easy to exploit and almost impossible to audit after the fact.
The mechanics repeat across complaints filed with lawyers and consumer forums nationwide. A committee member collects a fine in cash for a parking violation, a pet rule breach, or a noise complaint, issues no receipt, and the amount never appears in the receipts and payments account presented at the AGM. Multiply that across a large complex over a year and the unaccounted total can run into lakhs. This is the fact pattern that surfaced publicly in a western Bengaluru apartment complex, where the Kumbalgodu police registered a case after the association was found to have collected roughly Rs 3.30 lakh in fines over three months from residents accused of offences ranging from substance use to sexual harassment, money the association was neither authorised to levy nor accounting for.
Cash collection also creates separate tax exposure. Under the Income Tax Act, a person cannot receive Rs 2 lakh or more in cash from a single person in a single transaction or for a single event, and a society dealing habitually in unreceipted cash invites scrutiny on that ground alone. On GST, an RWA whose aggregate annual receipts exceed Rs 20 lakh must register, and under CBIC guidance it loses the per-member exemption on monthly contributions above roughly Rs 7,500 (CBIC Circular No. 109/28/2019-GST, reviewed 19 August 2026, worth confirming against the current text since GST guidance is periodically updated). A society collecting fines and “special contributions” in cash and never booking them is very likely also misreporting GST, turning a governance dispute among neighbours into a tax problem every member shares liability for.
The practical test for you as a member is simple. Every rupee the RWA collects from you, whether maintenance, a fine, or a special levy, should have a receipt with a serial number, should be traceable into the bank statement within a reasonable time, and should appear in the receipts and payments account you inspect. If it does not clear that test, ask why, in writing, and keep asking until you get an answer or a Registrar does the asking for you.
Can an rwa even levy a fine
Before you fight about where a fine went, it is worth asking whether the RWA had the power to levy it at all. The short answer is that an RWA can impose a charge that the general body has validly resolved to impose, through a properly passed resolution recorded in the bye-laws or in AGM minutes, but it cannot invent a penalty on the spot and call it binding.
Two things have to both be true for a fine to be enforceable. The bye-laws, or a resolution passed by the general body and recorded in the minutes, must actually authorise that category of charge, whether a late payment surcharge, a parking fine, or a pet policy penalty. And the rate must be one the general body fixed, not one a committee member decided in the moment. A fine invented ad hoc, with no bye-law basis and no general body resolution, is not a validly resolved charge, it is an arbitrary penalty, and courts and consumer forums have struck down excessive or unauthorised penalty clauses on exactly that basis.
The Bengaluru case above illustrates a sharper limit too. Even where a fine is procedurally valid, an RWA has no authority to use it as a substitute for reporting a crime to the police, or to treat payment as closing out an allegation that should have gone to law enforcement. An RWA managing committee is not a judicial authority. If a fine is being used to quietly monetise and bury what is actually a criminal complaint, whether theft, assault, or a POSH-covered incident, that belongs with the police, not the association’s fine register. It is also common for the underlying accusation to have already been posted in the resident WhatsApp group, with names and unit numbers attached, before the committee even levies a fine, and that raises a separate moderator and poster liability question covered in doxxing an accused person in a group chat.
A committee willing to invent a fine off the books is often the same committee that stonewalls a gate or curfew complaint, and that overreach and its remedies are covered separately in can your society lock the gate at 11 PM.
Late payment interest on unpaid maintenance sits on firmer ground than discretionary fines, because most bye-laws expressly authorise a capped interest rate on arrears, and the rights and remedies of a defaulting or disputing member are reasonably well settled on that narrow point even where the wider fine question is not.
Step one: send a written inspection request under the bye-laws
Do not start with a Registrar complaint. Start with a written request to the society itself, citing the specific bye-law or Act provision that gives you the right, and naming the exact documents you want. This is usually a procedural precondition before a Registrar will entertain a complaint about denial of access, and it turns “the committee is opaque” into “the committee refused a specific written request on this date,” which is what actually moves a Registrar to act.
Send it by a traceable method, registered post, tracked courier, or email with a physical copy following, and keep proof of delivery. Give a firm deadline, commonly seven to fifteen days depending on your bye-laws, and say plainly what you will do if it passes unanswered. Before you send anything, save copies of the specific minutes, notices or ledger extracts you already have, since evidence preserved before you escalate is worth far more than what you try to reconstruct later, a discipline covered in what to preserve before calling a lawyer.
To,
The Secretary,
[Name of Society / Association]
[Registered address]
Date: [date]
Subject: Written request for inspection of society records under
[cite the specific Act and section / bye-law number applicable to
your society, e.g. Section 32, Maharashtra Co-operative Societies
Act 1960, or the equivalent provision under your state's
apartment ownership act or your society's bye-laws]
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a member of the Society, holding flat/unit no. [___] in
[building/wing], and my membership number is [___].
I am writing to formally request inspection of, and certified
copies of, the following records for the period [financial year(s)]:
1. Register of members
2. Minutes book of general body and managing committee meetings
3. Receipts and payments account
4. Income and expenditure statement
5. Audited balance sheet
6. Bank statements for all accounts operated by the Society
7. Vendor contracts and tender documents for [name the specific
contract(s), e.g. housekeeping, security, lift maintenance]
awarded during [period]
8. Sinking fund ledger, showing all contributions and withdrawals
I request that inspection be arranged at the Society office within
[7/15] days of this letter, during office hours, and that I be
permitted to take photocopies or photographs of the above records
on payment of the prescribed fee, if any.
This request is made under my rights as a member under [cite Act/
bye-law]. Kindly note that failure to provide access within the
above period will leave me with no option but to escalate this
matter to the Registrar of Cooperative Societies / the competent
registering authority, and to pursue such further remedies as are
available in law.
Please acknowledge receipt of this letter.
Yours faithfully,
[Name]
[Flat/unit no.]
[Contact number and email]
[Date]
Enclosures: [any prior correspondence, if applicable]Keep a copy of everything you send and everything you receive, including the envelope or tracking record if the society claims it never got your letter. How to draft a legal notice covers the same discipline in more detail if this request escalates into a formal notice, and replying to a legal notice is worth reading from the other side, since a committee that receives a well-drafted request sometimes responds with a defensive legal notice of its own rather than the documents. If you are not sure whether what you got back is a genuine legal notice, a police notice, or just pressure with no legal weight behind it, that triage is covered in legal notice vs police notice vs summons.
Step two: requisition a special general body meeting
If the committee stonewalls the inspection request, or if what you find on inspection is bad enough that you need the whole membership to vote on it rather than just you asking questions, the next lever is a requisitioned special general body meeting.
Most cooperative bye-laws and apartment association rules allow a defined fraction of the membership, commonly one-fifth under the Maharashtra model bye-laws though the threshold varies by state, to force a special general body meeting by written requisition. The requisition must be in writing, signed by the required number of members, and state the business to be transacted: a resolution to table the accounts, appoint an independent or Registrar-panel auditor for a special audit, or remove specific office bearers.
Once received, the committee is usually bound to convene the meeting within a fixed window, often thirty days, and if it fails, the requisitioning members can call the meeting themselves under the Act’s default provisions. Get the threshold and procedural steps right from your own bye-laws rather than a generic figure, since a wrong signature count or a missing agenda item is exactly the technical defect a defensive committee will use to invalidate the exercise.
A meeting forced this way puts the question in front of every member, not just the ones who already suspect something is wrong, and a resolution to appoint a special auditor or refer the matter to the Registrar carries far more institutional weight than one member’s individual complaint.
Step three: complain to the registrar for an inquiry and a special audit
If the committee still refuses access, or if the special general body meeting does not resolve things because the same committee controls the room, escalate to the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, or the equivalent registering authority under your apartment ownership act.
Most state cooperative Acts give the Registrar three related powers that matter here. The power to inquire into the constitution, working, and financial condition of a society, exercised on his own motion or, generally, on application by a specified fraction of members. The power to order a special audit, distinct from the routine annual audit, carried out by an auditor of the Registrar’s choosing rather than one the committee picked. And, in a genuinely serious case, the power to supersede the managing committee and appoint an administrator until fresh elections are held. Section numbers for these three powers differ state to state, so check your own Act rather than borrow another state’s numbering.
Make your complaint specific, not a general grievance. Attach your written inspection request and the society’s refusal or silence, name the exact documents denied, and note how many members are joining the complaint, since a complaint signed by a set fraction of members carries more procedural weight than a solo one. Ask explicitly for an inquiry and, where the facts support it, a special audit and disciplinary action against office bearers responsible for any shortfall, recoverable as a surcharge against the individuals concerned under most Acts.
For associations formed under an apartment ownership act, the equivalent authority’s powers are usually narrower on paper, so check early, per the first section of this piece, whether a parallel cooperative registration exists, since that changes how hard the Registrar route works versus how fast you should move to RERA or a criminal complaint instead.
Step four: rera, the criminal complaint, and the civil injunction
Three further routes matter depending on what the underlying dispute actually is.
RERA, where the dispute touches common areas the builder has not properly handed over, sinking fund and corpus amounts collected at possession that were never transferred to the association, or a developer that retained control of the committee past when it should have handed over. The state Real Estate Regulatory Authority has jurisdiction over builder obligations under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, including handover of common areas and association formation timelines, a track separate from the Registrar’s supervisory jurisdiction over an already-constituted association’s internal accounts. Builder delay and possession compensation covers what you can recover if handover itself was delayed.
A criminal complaint, where the facts go beyond mismanagement into actual diversion. Criminal breach of trust, BNS Section 316 (old IPC Section 406), applies where an office bearer entrusted with the society’s funds dishonestly misappropriates or converts them. Cheating, BNS Section 318 (old IPC Section 420), applies where deception ran from the outset, for example an inflated vendor contract with a kickback. The two generally cannot be charged together on identical facts, since one needs lawful entrustment followed by misuse and the other needs dishonest intent from the start, so be precise about which pattern you have. File under the BNSS zero FIR or e-FIR route if the offence is cognizable. A completed special audit report naming a specific shortfall makes a criminal complaint far more credible than an unaudited suspicion.
A civil injunction, for urgent interim relief, say to stop a committee awarding a contract to a member’s relative before a special audit completes, or to freeze an account pending inquiry. This runs through the ordinary civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure and is usually the slowest route to a final result, so use it to preserve the status quo alongside a Registrar complaint, not as a standalone strategy.
| Route | Best for | Authority | Typical outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registrar inquiry and special audit | Internal mismanagement, opaque accounts, unauthorised vendor deals | Registrar of Cooperative Societies (or equivalent) | Inquiry report, special audit, possible surcharge or supersession |
| RERA | Corpus/sinking fund never handed over, common area handover disputes | State Real Estate Regulatory Authority | Direction to builder, compensation, handover order |
| Criminal complaint (BNS 316 / 318) | Clear diversion or fraud by an identified office bearer | Local police, then criminal courts | FIR, investigation, prosecution |
| Civil injunction | Urgent need to stop an ongoing wrongful act | Civil court | Interim order preserving the status quo |
Does rti apply to your rwa
The honest answer, most of the time, is no. An RWA or a cooperative housing society is a private, member-owned body, not a government department, and the Right to Information Act 2005 applies only to a “public authority” as defined in Section 2(h), which covers bodies owned, controlled, or substantially financed by government, directly or indirectly.
The exceptions are worth checking before you assume RTI is a dead end. If your association was substantially financed by a government scheme, government funds forming a dominant share of its capital or ongoing budget, the substantial-financing test can bring it within RTI’s reach, and courts read “substantial” as near-complete reliance on state funding, not any financing at all. Second, even where the association itself is outside RTI, information about it sitting with a genuine public authority, a municipal corporation’s registration record or a Registrar’s inquiry file, is fetchable through RTI against that authority, even though you cannot RTI the association directly. High Courts split on how far this extends: Bombay has been comparatively willing to bring housing societies within RTI’s reach in specific facts, Madras has held Tamil Nadu cooperative societies are not public authorities. Check your own state’s recent rulings rather than assume.
RTI is rarely your primary tool against your own RWA, but it is genuinely useful against the Registrar’s office once you have filed a complaint, since you can RTI the Registrar’s own file to check what action was taken and when. Filing an RTI covers the mechanics.
The consumer forum question
Whether a consumer forum will entertain a dispute against your own RWA is genuinely unsettled, worth stating plainly rather than papering over. The Consumer Protection Act 2019 defines “service” broadly, and several consumer commissions have accepted complaints from flat owners against their societies for specific service failures, most commonly a refusal to provide amenities the maintenance charge covers, or an unreasonable, unauthorised levy. The Consumer Protection Act 2019 framework and the e-Daakhil filing process are the mechanics if you go this route.
Where it gets shakier is exactly your fact pattern. A demand for accounts, or a dispute over internal fund management, is arguably a governance question that belongs with the Registrar, not a consumer dispute about a defective service, and some forums have declined jurisdiction on that basis. If your grievance is opacity and mismanagement, the Registrar route in step three is the stronger, more direct forum. If it is narrower, say the RWA collected a specific “amenity fee” and never provided the amenity, a consumer complaint sits on firmer ground. Do not file in both forums on the same facts without deciding which one you actually want to win in.
Frequently asked questions
Can the committee refuse to show me accounts because I have a pending dues dispute?
No. Your inspection right is independent of any dues dispute. A committee tying document access to payment status is adding a condition the statute does not contain, and that refusal is itself worth citing in a Registrar complaint.
How long does the society have to respond to my written inspection request?
This varies by state and bye-law, but many cooperative frameworks expect a response, and copies where requested, within about a month of the request and fee payment. Check your own Act for the exact figure, and state a clear deadline in your own letter regardless.
I am a tenant, not an owner. Can I still ask for these records?
Generally no. The inspection right runs to members, not tenants. A tenant disputing maintenance charges passed through by a landlord should route the grievance through the landlord, who is the actual member, or through a service-based consumer complaint.
Is the sinking fund the same as the corpus fund the builder collected at handover?
No, and this confusion is common. The corpus fund is typically a one-time builder handover amount, often disputed in RERA proceedings when it is never transferred at all. The sinking fund builds up through ongoing member contributions for major long-term repairs. Both should appear separately on the balance sheet.
Can I demand individual staff salary details as part of the accounts?
You are entitled to the aggregate staff or establishment expense in the income and expenditure statement. Individual salary details are usually personal information the committee can decline to disclose at that granular level.
The committee says an outside CA already audited the accounts. What more do I need?
An annual statutory audit and a Registrar-ordered special audit differ. The annual audit checks internal consistency of the books as presented, not whether cash collections were fully recorded or a vendor contract was inflated for a related party. A special audit is scoped specifically to investigate the irregularity you allege.
Does BNS Section 316 apply even if the committee member later returns the money?
Repayment can affect sentencing and support a settlement, but criminal breach of trust is generally complete at the point of dishonest misappropriation, not undone by later repayment. Whether the facts meet the threshold for dishonest intent, as opposed to a genuine error later corrected, needs a fact-specific assessment.
Can the Registrar force elections if the committee overstays its term without an AGM?
Yes. Most cooperative Acts fix a committee’s term, and the Registrar can direct elections, or in serious cases appoint an administrator, where a committee overstays without holding required elections or AGMs. That failure alone is grounds for a Registrar complaint.
If the Registrar’s inquiry finds nothing wrong, is that the end of the road?
Not necessarily. If the inquiry was inadequate or its conclusion does not fit the underlying records, you may challenge it through a further application, an appeal where your Act provides one, or in some cases a writ petition under Article 226, since a Registrar’s statutory inquiry function is a public duty subject to judicial review, though this is a high bar. A citation-verified research tool like Niyam is useful for checking whether a precedent on that point is still good law before you cite it.
What is the fastest single thing I can do this week if I suspect fund misuse?
Send the written inspection request from this piece today, by a traceable method, naming the specific documents and citing your state’s provision. That letter starts the clock on every escalation route that follows, and a committee with something to hide often reveals it in how it responds, or fails to respond.