SC directs Amrapali Group to meet home buyers on March 17

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday directed real estate firm Amrapali Group and its home buyers to hold a meeting and arrive at a consensus on the status of its projects which are nearing completion.

The top court said the meeting of representatives of Amrapali Group and the home buyers shall be held at the Supreme Court consultation room on March 17.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit said after the meeting, a consensus has to be reached on several aspects including the time needed for completion of its various projects, half completed projects and other issues.

"The joint statement and proposals shall be filed before the court on March 27, so that we can take a holistic view of the problems faced by the parties. The proposals filed should be in a tabular form with details of time needed for completing work at nearing completion projects and those in which work has not started so far," the bench said.

It said there was an urgent need to arrive at a consensus as "we want that home buyers to get their flats at the earliest. Refund of money is not the solution to the problem".

On February 22, the top court had said it shared the concerns of home buyers and the real estate firm should consider their plight and abide by the proposal to complete the housing projects and hand them possession in accordance with the time frame.

It had permitted the group to "immediately start" the work as proposed by the firm in the residential towers of its Leisure Park housing project in Greater Noida West in Uttar Pradesh and said the group should be "true" to the assurances given in the court as well as to the home buyers.

Amrapali Group had earlier given details of its ongoing housing projects, stages of work and the likely time to complete construction.

It had referred to the works related to 19 towers of Leisure Park project while giving information like number of floors, saleable area, proposed likely time to complete the finishing work, balance amount payable by the home buyers and expenditure to be incurred by the group.

It had said the likely time to complete the work and deliver possession of flats ranged from 3 to 15 months and Rs 87.28 crore would be required to complete the finishing works in these towers.

The real estate group had said that 12 developers, in addition to the Galaxy Group, were willing to collaborate for the purpose and assurance by these builders were testified by their individual letters which were annexed in the record.

The company, which is facing insolvency proceedings initiated by the creditor bank for not repaying the loans, had earlier told the top court in an affidavit that it was not in a position to complete the projects and hand over possession of flats to over 42,000 home-buyers in a time-bound manner. It had said the properties were needed to be developed with the help of co-developers.