If you are using the region rendering in the Maya render view, then you can turn it off from there.
If you are using the region rendering in the V-Ray VFB, then the only thing to do for the moment is to clear the “vfbSettingsArr” attribute right after opening a scene and before any rendering:setAttr vraySettings.vfbSettingsArr -type Int32Array 0;
At the moment - no; the MEL functions for V-Ray were created mainly for our internal use. Although you can also use them for what you need, currently we can’t make any commitments as to their support. If you need information on how to do something specific, it would be best to ask here; you can also look at the MEL scripts included with V-Ray for an example how to use many of the functions.