No excuse for builders to delay housing projects: SC

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, October 19 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that property developers should honour their contractual commitments to home buyers by completing and handing over the projects to the investors within the stipulated time.

A three-member Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra made the clarification while directing refund of Rs 15 crore, which Unitech Residential Resorts Ltd had deposited in the apex court, to 39 people who had invested in the company’s Gurgaon project involving construction of flats.

The Bench, which included Justices Amitava Roy and AM Khanwilkar, rejected the builder’s plea for extension of the time for handing over the flats till April 2017.

The court noted that the investors, who were present in the court, had submitted “in unequivocal and categorical terms that their patience is on the funeral pyre and they cannot wait any longer believing in the concept of optimism and expectation” as the company had not built the flats as assured.

In fact, they had landed up in “such a financial crisis that they had never conceived of,” the Bench opined.

“Their voice of anguish is echoed in the court room as they say their dreams have been shattered and they have been constrained to pave the path of impecuniosity,” the apex court recorded in its order.

“The appellant (Unitech) by delaying or procrastinating the completion of the flats cannot base its stand on excuses or any subterfuge to advance the stand that the constructions take time. The submission in a way rests upon the metaphor that ‘Rome was not built in a day’ but serves no purpose.

“It is ‘flat’ or ‘money’ and nothing else. The respondents (investors) collectively make a demand for refund of money because they have fought the litigation with ceaseless vigour and enormous hope,” the Bench said in the order while slating further hearing in the case for January 11, 2017.