COIMBATORE: Nearly 700 homebuyers, who had booked flats and villas in Sahara’s housing project in Saravanampatti in Coimbatore, can breathe easy now. The Tamil Nadu Real Estate Regulatory Authority (TNRERA) has appointed a committee to execute sale deeds for undivided share/plots in favour of the buyers, years after execution of the mega real estate project ground to a halt.
In a landmark order, TNRERA has permitted the Sahara Housing Investors Association (SHIA) to complete the project and would be executing the deeds for the common lands in favour of the association.
In an order passed by TNRERA chairperson K Gnanadesikan, Sahara Prime City Ltd and its sister companies failed to complete the housing projects citing financial constraints. The proposed project, which was to be built on 112.14 acres in Saravanamapatti on Sathymangalam Road, was put on hold at the end of 2013 after the Supreme Court verdict on the Sahara group. So far, only 20 per cent of the project has been completed, association members said.
After registration, TNRERA will write to the Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) to accord renewed/revised planning permission on application by the association, said the order. While individuals, who had invested in the project, had approached the consumer court since 2015, they approached TNRERA in 2019.
Six-year-long struggle comes to end for buyers
With this order, the six-year-long legal struggle comes to an end for the buyers who invested nearly `100 crore at Saravanampatti, which is one of the added areas to Coimbatore city limit. C Lakshminarayanan, joint secretary of SHIHIA, said, “We started booking the flats and individual houses by paying a minimum of `3 lakh to a maximum of `1 crore. Totally, 700 people had invested money up to `100 crore.” He added that the association currently has 450 members.
“We could have received the completed housing project in 2012. However, due to the delay, home buyers faced mental stress for over a decade. This order comes as relief to retired members and few that are living in foreign countries. However, five people have died over the past decade and many of them continue to live in a rented house in a bid to get their dream house,” he said.
AD Arabindh, another joint secretary of SHIHIA, said, “In TNRERA’s earlier order in 2020, they allowed the association to take over the construction of the project and had restrained the Sahara group from proceeding further. It also directed the group to execute the sale deed for undivided flats and individual houses, and execute the sale deed conveying the common areas in favour of the association apart from levying a `1 crore fine against the group.”
Coimbatore Consumer Cause secretary K Kathirmathiyon said, “This is a notable judgement and lesson to real estate firms that don’t register their projects under TNRERA and cheat people. ” AD Abhishek Secretary CREDAI TN said, “We hope the government will also implement a single window system for approvals so that activities can be fastracked.”