From now on, builders have to shell out an eight per cent interest for every delayed payment to the authorities, the Supreme Court said on Monday. The court recalled its 2020 order while hearing the Amrapali case, where due to insolvency cases, the interest part of payment was shelved.
The order was passed by the Bench comprising Chief Justice UU Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Bela Trivedi. In September, Senior advocate R Venkataramani, a court-appointed receiver in the Amrapali homebuyers case (current Attorney-General), told the Supreme Court that 11,858 flats will be delivered in two to three months to the homebuyers, of which 5,428 units will be handed over for possession in October.
Recently the apex court was informed that only 4,981 of the approximately 46,000 Amrapali homebuyers have received possession of their flats in the three years since the Supreme Court entrusted the developer's unfinished projects to the State-owned NBCC (formerly National Building Construction Corporation) in July 2019.
The top court has been monitoring the cases related to the embattled real estate company after many homebuyers approached it alleging malpractices and non-delivery of homes or flats.
Amrapali Group's ex-directors Anil Kumar Sharma, Shiv Priya, and Ajay Kumar were put behind bars on the top court's order in 2019 and multiple cases have been lodged against them for allegedly diverting homebuyers' money.
Recently, Sharma was granted bail in some cases. He was facing more than 30 cases, including charges for money laundering under PMLA.
Previous month, while granting bail in many cases, the top court asked him to approach the PMLA for bail.
In 2019, the apex had given a go-ahead to the Government-owned National Buildings Construction Corporation (NBCC) to start the process of completing two stalled Amrapali housing projects.