It looks like no one is ready to take responsibility for homebuyers, and no one is telling us when we will get our homes,” laments Sunil Agarwal, one of the National Capital Region’s (NCR) thousands of disgruntled homebuyers.
Having invested his hard-earned savings to book a flat with the fraud-hit Amrapali group, Agarwal says that all his money is now stuck in the project, and despite strong action initiated by the Supreme court, he sees no reason for hope. The government, he feels, has failed thousands of homebuyers desperately waiting for possession of their homes for several years.
Agarwal’s case is not unique. There are around one lakh homebuyers who have been duped by various builders in NCR alone, with these cases stuck in various courts. This number includes 46,000 buyers in Amrapali’s projects who had paid up more than Rs 11,000 crore to the group, 17,000 homebuyers in Unitech’s 74 housing projects who have shelled out more than Rs 14,000 crore and 32,000 homebuyers who have already paid another Rs 14,000 crore for flats in bankrupt Jaypee’s projects.
The Supreme Court, while hearing cases against Amrapali Developers and Unitech last week, had asked the government to take over management of both companies and asked the Noida and Greater Noida Development Authorities to complete the projects.
Much to the frustration of homebuyers, however, both the authorities expressed their helplessness citing a lack of adequate resources to complete the stalled projects.
While the Noida authority has cited a lack of expertise, the Greater Noida authority says it is facing a funding crisis since it has a debt of around Rs 5,000 crore to repay to various banks and government bodies. It is also struggling to recover around Rs 7,000 crore from 200 defaulting builders.
Funding is an issue even in the case of state-run construction major NBCC, which had estimated the total cost of completing the Amrapali project at Rs 8,500 crore. With no clarity on where the money will come from, no progress on this has been made so far.
Despite forensic auditors telling the courts that the government can recover about Rs 9,500 crore of homebuyer’s money which was siphoned off to other companies and personal accounts of Amrapali’s promoters, no action had been initiated on them by the government.
The Supreme Court, for its part, has expressed strong displeasure and conveyed that the government cannot leave distressed homebuyers in the lurch to fight a legal battle against a real estate giant. The government, the SC said, is “obliged” to intervene to protect their interest.
“We are not experts on the issue. The government should deal with these issues. We would ask the government to step in to protect the interest of homebuyers. The government is obliged to protect the middle-class homebuyers. These people have invested their hard earned money. They are paying interest on home loans, but are not getting their homes. We have no solution on their plight. What can we do? We are saying so with great sense of anguish,” Justice Chandrachud observed.
The bench has already asked the Attorney General to assist the court and requested him to hold consultations with concerned departments to frame a mechanism to protect the interest of buyers.