Jaypee Infratech Homebuyers Root For NBCC
The distraught home-buyers of Jaypee Infratech, a real estate arm of Jaiprakash Associates, who have been fighting a legal battle for the past two years so that over 25,000 home buyers get the ownership of their homes (in the NOIDA region of Uttar Pradesh), are now rooting for the state-owned NBCC to complete the project.
State-owned NBCC (India) & Mumbai-based Suraksha Realty, have submitted their final bids to complete several under-construction projects of Jaypee Infratech in Noida, as part of the dispute resolution mechanism
“Home-buyers want successful resolution; they are not averse to the plan of either of the two bidders/resolution applicants. However, there are certain essential criteria which steers NBCC much ahead in comparison to the other bidder. Only NBCC has the experience of developing townships and large building complexes in the NCR region," says Aaditya Gutgutia, the spokesperson for the consortium of 9 associations representing the unfinished housing projects of Jaypee Infratech.
Jaypee Wishtown Noida is a huge project comprising of 25,000 unfinished flats.
"The support of Government and its Navratna PSU status has instilled confidence in the 25,000 beleaguered home buyers. Those home buyers who are scattered across various cities and have not been able to keep pace with the developments, we urge those homebuyers through this press release to vote YES for the resolution plan of NBCC,” Gutgutia said in a statement.
They are urging the private sector banks (creditors) to take a pragmatic view and evaluate the overall economic benefits to the Banking industry by resolving the largest real estate stressed company from the first RBI list of dirty dozen of Y 2017.
“We are confident that the public sector banks will surely take their decisions in the larger Public good. We are confident that it will help the entire banking sector as the distressed home-buyers would be able to service their home loans on a regular basis. The banks cannot and should not ignore the greater public cause. Thus, we seek their support and request Banks both public and private to vote in favour of NBCC,” Gutgutia added.
Background to the Crisis
It was in May 2016 that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) was enacted. In 2017, an IDBI Bank-led consortium filed an insolvency case against Jaypee Infratech in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for default in the repayment of the loan. Until then, the company had offered only about 20 per cent of its projects for possession. It should be noted here that Jaypee Infratech was the first few real estate developers who were dragged before NCLT for insolvency. However, it was the Jaypee Infratech case that led to a major amendment in IBC—by way of Insolvency and Bankruptcy (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 issued on 6 June 2018, homebuyers were given rights as financial creditors.
Since June 2018 (after getting the financial creditor status), a total 1,821 cases have been filed by homebuyers against builders under the Code," Corporate Affairs Minister Anurag Singh Thakur said in Parliament last month.
