Greater Noida: Parmita Banerjee is a homeowner without a home. Every day, the 42-year-old single mother posts videos and messages on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram demanding what she’s owed: “Give us our apartments – we deserve what we paid for!”
In the six years since she booked a flat in a yet-to-be-constructed tower at Greater Noida’s Supertech Sports Village, she survived the pandemic, buried her husband, enrolled her now eight-year-old daughter in school, met with MPs and MLAs, and consulted lawyers. But there is no building on the site—no brick, no scaffolding.
Greater Noida, with its grand towers and sprawling apartment complexes, is also a graveyard of the great Indian middle-class dream gone horribly wrong. Agricultural land acquired by the Mayawati government in 2009-2010 for industrial purposes was later allotted to residential developers by the Greater Noida Industrial DevelopmentAuthority (GNIDA), resulting in a glut of housing schemes at throwaway prices. A 2BHK 300 sq ft flat in a tower was selling for Rs 8-10 lakh compared to the Rs 15-20 lakh that buyers would have to shell out for a similar sized apartment in Noida.
Suddenly, owning a flat in the outlying suburbs of Delhi became affordable to a swathe of families who lined up to book their futures. There was a mad scramble for flats, but the apartments were never built, and those that did come up, were not registered.
Now, GNIDA has a new CEO, Ravi Kumar NG—who took over from Ritu Maheshwari in July—and homeowners have renewed their protests. The Noida Extension Flat Owners & Members Association (NEFOMA) already had one meeting with him. There are over one lakh homebuyers who are either awaiting possession or registry of their flats, according to NEFOMA’s database.
“He has promised to take action. We are hopeful because the previous CEO was never accessible. We would take appointments, but return without meeting her,” said Annu Khan, president of NEFOMA.
There has been some initial promise. On Monday, the CEO reportedly handed over the authorisation letter to builders’ representatives, instructing them to begin the registration process. The projects are all in Greater Noida (West), also known as Noida Extension, and 1,139 homebuyers will receive ownership rights.
But homebuyers like Banerjee, who put all their savings into owning a flat and securing their future, are now trapped in a web of deceit spun by unscrupulous builders.
The drama is playing out in courts. Builders have been arrested—some are declared insolvent—but owners are yet to get their flats. Now they are banding together on WhatsApp, mobilising Twitter storms for media attention, knocking on the doors of consumer courts, and forming forums to fight for their flats.
In March, NEFOMA homebuyers met Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who assured them of a solution.
But even the government is scrambling to get its dues.
“Builders owe Rs 14,504 crore to the Greater Noida Industrial Authority,” said Srivastava, GNIDA’s officer on special duty.
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Arrests don’t pay the dues
In 2017, when Banerjee and her husband booked the apartment, they were assured of possession in two years. In 2019, the site was still vacant. A year later, her husband died of Covid.
“When we asked for a refund, Supertech refused saying there is no such policy. So, to compensate, they said a flat in another Supertech property named Eco Village 2 will be given to us and we have to pay a few more lakhs,” recalls Banerjee. Having sunk all her savings, she agreed to the deal, but the second flat, too, is not ready. She is among the 2,600-odd homebuyers awaiting for the construction to begin, according to the Eco Village 2 buyers group.
“Only the structure has come up,” says Banerjee.
Last month, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Supertech builder RK Arora in a money laundering case. This was the latest in a string of arrests including Unitech’s Chandra brothers and Amrapali’s Anil Kumar in the past four years. On 11 April, the ED attached properties worth Rs 40.39 crore belonging to Supertech and its directors, including 25 immovable assets in Uttarakhand and Meerut Mall in Uttar Pradesh.
But the arrests will not make a dent on what is owed to homeowners and the Greater Noida Authority.
“The authority is yet to recover dues from the builders and in between, the homebuyers are being punished,” NEFOMA president Khan said.
According to Srivastava, OSD to the Greater Noida CEO, only 57 of the 163 properties have been constructed so far. “Of these 163 projects, a total of Rs 5,504 crore is pending. And for those projects which are under litigation, we have an amount of Rs 9,224 crore pending,” he said.
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A dream unconstructed
On WhatsApp groups teeming with disgruntled and disillusioned buyers, the arrests bring momentary hope. But cynicism quickly sets in.
“Builder has been arrested but what about us? Our apartments are still non-existent,” reads a message by Banerjee in a WhatsApp group called ECO V2 owners society, which has over 500 members.
“Lets tweet and tag Yogi baba,” said another homeowner.
A third wants to mobilise the group. “Lets create a hashtag #Cheatedhomebuyers and tweet and retweet for next two hours.”
Since her husband’s death, Banerjee has knocked on every door – be it the GNIDA, or MLAs and MPs — but nothing has happened. She has contacted the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) too. “We are pleading to the court to start the construction on immediate basis but we are only getting tareekh (date) after tareekh in the last 18 months,” said Banerjee.
Homeowners organise peaceful protests every month where children and grandparents hold placards and raise slogans to remind the authorities of their plight. Supertech allocated temporary flats to Banerjee and other affected buyers near the construction site last year. The developer reportedly promised to bear the cost of the rental accommodation until the construction of Eco village 2 project is complete.
Last year, the NCALT initiated insolvency proceedings against Supertech’s Eco Village 2 and appointed a corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP) officer to oversee the project’s completion. But after the CIRP was assigned, homeowners alleged that they received emails from Supertech saying that they could no longer live in the rented accommodations.
“I was shocked to see that mail. We went to the appointed CIRP, Hitesh Goyal, but he said that he can’t help us. And then, we had no other option but to pay the rent,” said Meenakshi Debi, another homebuyer, pausing to take a sip of water. Goyal did not answer ThePrint’s messages or calls. The copy will be updated when he responds.
Debi booked a 2BHK flat in 2013 after selling off her 1BHK apartment in Delhi. It was a 2012 advertisement in a national newspaper that made Debi and her husband plan for a bigger house in the suburbs for a better future for themselves and their two daughters.
The first time that Debi and her husband went to Greater Noida to check the location, they saw a queue of homebuyers, which made them desperate to book a flat quickly. A marketing person from Supertech was sitting in a chair in the middle of a barren land – where the tower of their upcoming home would stand – listening to the potential homebuyers. At a distance, a bank employee could be seen offering best loan terms to them, Debi recalls.
“Looking at how quickly the flats were being sold off, that same evening, my husband and I booked a flat and applied for the loan the next day,” Debi said.
Her apartment was supposed to be on the 16th floor. Debi dreamt of fresh air entering her house through the balcony and how she could look at the world from the top of her apartment. It has been ten years, and Debi is still waiting for the 16th floor to be constructed.
“I hope I am alive to see my flat. We don’t have a house now,” she said, breaking into sobs.
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The fig leaf of registration
Buyers like Debi and Banerjee can’t help but compare their lot with families who have got possession of their flats. But this ‘fortunate’ category of homeowners are mired in red-tape and registry tangles.
Retired Army colonel RP Khanna, 78, bought an apartment in Amrapali Zodiac in 2012 for Rs 60 lakh. After an eight-year-long wait, he was finally able to shift to his new home in 2020, but the flat is not registered.
“Until the registry is done, the flat is not yours. You are just living in it. When the builders have not paid the dues to Noida Authority and there is no clearance certificate, how can we claim the ownership?” said Khanna.
The Greater Noida Authority is preparing to take action against builders who gave buyers like Khanna possession of flats despite non-payment of dues.
“Until the dues of the authority remain and the occupancy certificate is not received, the flats will not be registered. Even though the flat buyers have started living without a registry, they will not get ownership rights until the flats are registered,” said the Authority in a statement.
The genteel retirement Khanna envisioned for himself stands in stark contrast to the reality of shoddy construction, peeling paint, and leakages.
In May, the Supreme Court rejected the bail plea of former CMD of Amrapali Group of Companies, Anil Kumar Sharma, for cheating homebuyers.
“You have cheated thousands of homebuyers. You siphoned off their hard-earned money and life savings. You do not deserve any sympathy… See the plight of thousands of homebuyers. You better enjoy being in jail,” the court had said, rejecting Kumar’s bail plea.
The Supreme Court had also pulled up Noida and Greater Noida authorities for allotting land to Amrapali Group without insisting for payment of dues.
“The Noida and Greater Noida authorities and the bankers have permitted diversion of funds of home-buyers and the possession of the other assets by the Amarpali,” the court said in its order.
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Scams and broken dreams
Noida’s history of land scams does not elicit faith in the system.
Advocate KK Singh, whose clients include cheated buyers, alleges that these scams could not have unfolded and ballooned to such an extent without the existence of a strong political-builder nexus.
“The politicians at the helm, the officials in the authority together created this mess. Officials were bribed by the builders and they kept extending the time for paying the dues while allotting builders one plot after another,” said KK Singh.
In 2012, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary and Noida Authority CEO Neera Yadav, who was also the state’s first woman Chief Secretary, and former IAS officer Rajiv Kumar were convicted in the Noida land scam that took place between 1993-95. Yadav was found guilty by a CBI court of corruption by violating the rules and fraudulently allotting residential and commercial land at throwaway prices. The land was given to politicians and high-profile people.
Despite the case against her, then-Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav appointed Neera to the post of Chief Secretary in 2005.
In 2005, the GNIDA acquired residential land owned by the farmers for infrastructural projects. Following protests, it agreed to lease the land back to the farmers, but in the process, 50 hectares of land was given to private companies and individuals who were “not the owners of the land.” The fraud, which came to be called the ‘leaseback scam’, came to light in 2017. Two years later, an FIR was registered against 12 people, including some officials of Greater Noida Authority under the Prevention of Corruption Act in connection with the case.
A special investigation team (SIT) was formed in 2020 by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe irregularities in allotting the land rights by the Greater Noida Authority. The SIT, which was headed by Arun Vir Singh, CEO of the Yamuna authority, had to investigate 2,000 cases of leasebacks or ‘abadi’ land to farmers.
The state government had also ordered a fast track probe in 2018 against 27 GNIDA officials for their alleged role in the ‘homebuyer’ scam where land was taken from farmers and allotted to builders. The probe, which is still on, was ordered after Jewar MLA Dhirendra Singh alleged in the state assembly that 2,500 acres in Greater Noida (West) was changed from industrial to residential. ThePrint contacted MLA but he remained unreachable.
The 2021 Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) report on land acquisition and allotment of properties in Noida stated that five of the 28 housing schemes between 2005-06 and 2017-18 had been approved by the authority’s Group Housing wing—82 per cent of schemes were not submitted to the Noida board for approval before the launch.
“Noida surreptitiously enabled the builders to apply and obtain multiple plots on the back of insufficient net worth. This position of non-completion of projects is evidence that Noida has created conditions for bypassing its own stipulations by allowing financially ineligible bidders to garner more plots on the back of insufficient net worth thereby extending undue favours to them,” the CAG report said.
As the monsoon session of Parliament started this month, Banerjee and other homebuyersstarted bombarding Twitter, posting tweets enquiring about the fate of homebuyers.
A photo of her husband stands on a shelf in her rented house next to a heap of documents and files along with the blueprint of their dream home.
“I will fight to get possession of my flat until I am alive,” says Banerjee, while her eight-year-old daughter wriggles on her lap.
She has no choice.
(Edited by Prashant)