In a decision that can bring cheer to homebuyers who have been waiting endlessly for their dream flats to be delivered, the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority to provide details of the financial demands that it would have raised had the original builder completed an abandoned housing project in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
The apex court criticized the authority for failing to cooperate in the entire exercise of reviving a dead project where the home buyers had been cheated by the builder who had vanished decades ago.
A group of 40 home buyers, who joined together to complete one tower containing 40 apartments of four-bedroom each, claimed that they wanted to revive the abandoned project and were willing to pay their proportionate share of the charges due to the Authority. The project got abandoned after Golf Course Sahankari Awas Samiti, a cooperative housing society, which took the plot on lease in 2004, failed to pay the lease dues to the authority despite taking money from the home buyers.
A bench comprising justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta asked the Authority to file an affidavit within a week providing the details of the demand that it would have raised in case the original builders had completed the project so that the proportional charges of each of the home buyers can be decided depending upon the size of the apartments they are taking.
“We are not happy with the fact that the Greater Noida Industrial Development 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 SC said.
The home buyers had moved the Allahabad High Court seeking quashing of the termination of the lease deed in 2011. However, the HC in 2016 refused to interfere with the order of the Authority cancelling the lease on grounds that there was no deposit of lease rent and other dues by the housing society. The homebuyers then moved the SC.
