It has been more than a decade since these NRIs paid crores of rupees to have their dream home. They thought of spending the rest of their lives there.
And that is the reason why they paid their hard-earned money to Emaar projects near Hitec City in Hyderabad that promised them excellent villas and flats.
Now after a decade, with their dreams shattered, more than 100 such homebuyers have approached the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) urging it to declare the Emaar Hills Township Project Ltd as insolvent by initiating corporate insolvency process against the company.
They are of the view that this is the only way left to make the Emaar company deliver their villas and flats at least now.
CBI, that probed the deal, filed a charge-sheet in the trial court charging Emaar-MGF chief Sravan Gupta along with kingpin Koneru Rajendra Prasad, other accused like Vijay Raghava, Sunil Reddy of south-end projects etc. with turning this project into a huge scam.
The dream project of several innocent homebuyers has thus turned into a scam project.
The CBI arrested several accused in the case along with Koneru and some IAS officers.
These IAS officers had allowed 500 acres of valuable government property at a prime locality like Gachibowli to go into the hands of errant players like MGF company.
Emaar PJSC is a Dubai-based company that originally entered into an agreement with the Andhra Pradesh state to develop villas but later allowed firms like MGF to use its name. The state and Emaar PJSC started a special purpose joint venture company called Emaar Hills Township Project for the purpose.
MGF chief Sravan Gupta, who obtained conditional permission from the CBI court to go abroad, has never been seen in the past five years. People who are in the know of things say that he flouted the court’s conditions and did not turn up till now.
CBI and enforcement directorate had unearthed an Rs 100 crore scam in this and they tracked the journey of this scam money and narrated how it went into the hands of certain individuals running fictitious companies.
According to T Sudhakar, the counsel for the homebuyers, the wait has become too much and they have now approached the tribunal seeking a direction to the company to complete the construction and hand them over their villas.
Senior counsel P Venugopal appeared for Emaar and said that these batch of cases have come up before two benches of NCLT.
As there is a likelihood of two benches expressing conflicting views on the same matter and things may become more complex, he sought transfer of all Emaar cases to one bench. He raised technical objections over the pleas of the customers because they have to file them within three years. Now, it’s more than eight years and hence the clause of limitation will not allow these customers to raise their pleas in such a belated manner, he said.
