The Supreme Court today directed the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority to cooperate with homebuyers in reviving an abandoned housing project. The Court has asked the Authority to provide details of the financial demands it would have raised had the original builder completed the project so that proportional charges for each homebuyer can be determined based on the size of their apartments.
The housing project in question was left incomplete after a cooperative housing society, which had leased the plot from the Authority, failed to pay its dues despite collecting money from homebuyers. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta criticised the Authority for not cooperating in the effort to revive the stalled project.
"We are not happy with the fact that the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority (hereafter referred to as 'Authority') is not cooperating in the entire exercise of reviving a dead project where the home buyers have been cheated by the builder who has vanished decades ago and some of the home buyers have joined together to revive the entire project in part and also other home buyers are coming in for revival of the remaining part of the Project," the Court observed.
Senior Advocate Ravindra Kumar, representing the Authority, requested a week's time to provide the necessary financial details.
The society, Golf Course Sahakari Awas Samiti Ltd, had applied for land allotment from the Authority, which was granted in 2004 as Plot No. 7, Sector Pi-2, Greater Noida, Gautam Budh Nagar. However, homebuyers later alleged that the Society, in collusion with financial institutions, defrauded them by ceasing payments to the Authority. Many homebuyers had taken loans from banks to purchase flats in the project.
Homebuyers initially approached the Allahabad High Court to challenge the Authority's 2011 order terminating the lease deed. Later, an FIR was filed against the Society's directors.
In a 2016 ruling, the Allahabad High Court upheld the Authority's decision to cancel the lease, citing non-payment of dues by the Housing Society. Dissatisfied with the decision, homebuyers took the matter to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to submit a roadmap for investigating the "builder-bank nexus" that has allegedly defrauded thousands of homebuyers in the National Capital Region (NCR).
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh noted that thousands of homebuyers were impacted by subvention schemes, under which banks disbursed 60 to 70 per cent of home loan amounts directly to builders, even though the projects were not completed on time.
Under these schemes, banks were responsible for releasing funds to developers, who in turn were supposed to pay the EMIs until the flats were delivered. However, when builders defaulted, banks demanded payments from homebuyers instead.
