Thousands of home buyers of real estate major Amrapali Group in Noida and Greater Noida will now have to wait longer to get possession of their flats.
The contractors working on at least three projects of the Amrapali Group have threatened to stop work due to the delay in payment amounting to Rs 500 crore. The contractors have lodged a complaint with National Building Construction Corporation (NBCC) for the delay in payments.
This will affect construction work for around 8000 housing units in Noida and Greater Noida.
A few contractors have asked workers to stop work on these projects and diverted the labourers to other construction sites.
This ‘obstruction of work’ and slow pace of construction for other projects will affect around 40,000 home buyers.
One of the contractors has informed that they have not got any payment after February 2021 despite meeting the chairman and managing director of NBCC according to a report in The Economic Times. Five other contractors have written to NBCC asking for around Rs 500 crore of pending payments, as per report.
In August 2020 the NBCC resumed the construction work for the stalled Amrapali Group projects. In July 2019 the Supreme Court cancelled the registration of the Amrapali Group under the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016 for breaching buyers’ trust and mandated state-run NBCC to take over the stalled projects.
NBCC has been entrusted with the work on three projects (valued at around Rs. 1,555 crores) — Golf Homes, Leisure Park, and Kingswood – comprising 8,000 units. NBCC said that the payment delay is due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
NBCC is also involved in completing the half-done work in 23 Amrapali housing projects after Amrapali faced allegations of mismanagement and subsequent fund shortage and liquidity crisis. The Supreme Court ordered NBCC to take up the projects, which entails a cost of around Rs. 8,500 crore.
The Court appointed receiver is in the process of selling some of Amrapali’s assets to get financing for project completion.