by the Editor: Siddharth Sehgal
On the 28th of August, The Twin Towers built by the Real Estate Company Supertech were demolished, though it was made into a spectacle by the media, what this signifies is an irony of our system. Those towers were a symbol of corruption that pervades every aspect of our society but that corruption did not go away with the demolition of the twin towers.
Residents of Emerald Court fought hard in court to prevent construction that was undertaken with utmost disregard to bye-laws. This blatant disregard would not have been possible without the collusion of officials and though thirty of Noida Authority have been named as accused a broader audit should be conducted on Noida Authorities’ corruption and ties to the builder.
Supertech is not the only builder against whom home buyers have filed cases in court, there is a big list of cases being fought against builders who have defaulted on the promise of delivering homes to unsuspecting buyers. Delhi NCR is perhaps the only region in our country that has the highest concentration of duped buyers. These are hardworking, middle-class people who are fighting for their due rights and with the slow speed of our legal system, Twin Towers are a rare episode of hope. There is hardly anyone living in Noida who doesn’t know a person whose property is either delayed or stuck in a bureaucratic mess or has bought into a project where the builder has stopped construction or made off with home-buyers funds.
Though agencies like RERA do offer protection to a certain extent by rating the builders as per their performance and increasing knowledge and awareness of home buyers we need to have a much stronger and regulated ecosystem where the interest of home-buyers can be protected.
Owning a house is no small feat in India, with land and construction costs rising every day it’s becoming more of a dream than a reality to buy land or property in India these days. Even if you manage to buy it there are always worries of the property being forcefully stolen by the land mafia. For those who have invested in an apartment project in Noida and the broader Delhi NCR region, concerns of construction material quality, registration of property, and timely acquisition of property are always a concern. I am not saying that all real-estate builders are bad actors but there have been too many cases of home buyers being swindled that many like me have dropped the idea of living and owning a house in Delhi NCR altogether.
Moreover, the pollution of the Delhi NCR region is another major factor to build abodes elsewhere. Trust is the foundation stone of any business but that stone is in short supply in the real estate market of Delhi NCR.