Amrapali home buyers, including Dhoni, asked to clear outstanding dues within 15 days

Over 1,800 home buyers of Amrapali housing projects in Noida, including former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, have been asked by the Supreme Court-appointed receiver to fill their data on his website and begin clearing their respective dues within 15 days.

As per persons familiar with the development, this process has been initiated following the top court's direction to the receiver, senior advocate R. Venkataramani, to finalise the unsold inventory and sell it. According to a notice in a leading newspaper, the flat allocation will be automatically cancelled if the home buyers fail to register their name in the customer data and do not begin making payments within 15 days of the notice.

According to the notice, Dhoni has booked two flats, C-P5 and C-P6, in Sapphire Phase-I, in Sector 45 Noida, while Arun Pandey, Chairman of Rhiti Sports Management that represents Dhoni, also has a flat, C-P4, in the same project.

Dhoni, in April 2016, had resigned as brand ambassador of Amrapali, which is now non-operational.

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"It is necessary to identify the claimants regarding the units, especially those who have not taken steps to fill the customer data on the website of the court receiver and are most likely 'benami' in nature," said Kumar Mihir, counsel for home buyers.

The Amrapali Stalled Projects Investment Reconstruction Establishment (ASPIRE), formed to complete the unfinished projects in Noida and Greater Noida, published the notice. According to the notice, all home buyers of these projects must mandatorily register their data online with the receiver. The list includes home buyers who have not paid any amount of their outstanding dues as per the top court's order in July 2019.

The list also consists of home buyers who have neither registered their name in the customer data nor made any payment into UCO Bank, up to July 17, 2021, as reported to the top court. "Consequently, they are to be treated as defaulters and their units are liable to be cancelled," said the notice.

On August 13, the Supreme Court was informed that nearly 9,600 homebuyers, in various Amrapali housing projects, have not come forward to claim their flats. A bench comprising Justices U.U. Lalit and Ajay Rastogi allowed the plea of the court-appointed receiver to treat these flats as unsold inventory, and if nobody comes forward to claim them, then the next step should be their cancellation and auctioning to raise money for construction of the remaining unfinished projects.

According to a note submitted by the receiver in the top court, "it has emerged that 9,583 homebuyers have neither registered so far in the customer data maintained by the office of the receiver, nor have made any payments, subsequent to the judgment of the court in July 2019." The top court had said it would direct that a 15 day notice be issued to these home buyers to update their registration and make payments.

Mihir said that swapping of units and sale of unsold inventory depends on the finalisation of the data regarding flat buyers. "Now that the banks are also considering lending project finance to Amrapali projects, a part of unsold inventory will be kept a security with them as well. All this can be done only after the data regarding the unsold inventory is finalised which is now being sought to be done by the notice in the newspapers," he added.

State-owned NBCC has been asked to complete more than 20 housing projects with an estimated investment of over Rs 8,000 crore under the monitoring of a court-appointed committee. The top court-appointed receiver has issued notice to home buyers in Noida projects and soon, a separate notice will be published for buyers of Greater Noida projects.

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