Charu Mathur: Sir, your take on the flat buyers, the homeowners taking the route of IBC. They have other remedies also—be it RERA, be it consumer forum, they can go. But what I’m saying is that more and more people are taking the IBC route for the possession of their flats or getting their money back from the real-estate project.

U K Chaudhary: I think, this is a good and encouraging moment according to me. And the flat buyers and the property buyers, from the real-estate developers, are really very happy about this development. And, particularly because the consumer forums were taking years and deciding their matters, so was that their civil suits. And RERA has just come into the picture. Therefore, there was no administrative authority or semi-judicial authority which could effectively deal with their problems. And I think this is the doing, mostly of the real-estate companies. I have rendered at least about 50 to 60 cases of the various real-estate developers and find out that in most of the cases, the delay has been abnormal. They have not been able to handover the flats, ranging anywhere between three years to sometime even ten years or fifteen years. Therefore, this is a good development and I feel if they individually still cannot go, at least their organisation with hundred and more flat owners can at least take and invoke this jurisdiction. And I think it’s a good development, there must not be any negative feeling about it. Real-estate developers need to be accountable other than RERA, to some judicial authority where the flat buyers and homeowners at least can get some effective remedy.

Charu Mathur: Right sir! 

U K Chaudhary: Through the IR process or the CIRP process or through IRP or RP. And in some cases, some of the RPs have done a wonderful job, during the CIR process itself they had delivered the possession of thousands of flats in some cases.

Charu Mathur: So, that is very encouraging. It is a win-win situation. 

U K Chaudhary: Yes, according to me, it’s very encouraging and it’s a good development. And I, for one, do not see anything negative about it. I feel that this is what was needed in the favor of the home buyers.

Charu Mathur: Sir, but I have a bit of a soft corner for real-estate builders. Also because I don’t think it is completely there undoing. Like for the NCR region, I can speak, when CWG was happening, NGT has put an embargo, and construction and the inventories which were collected at that point of time.

U K Chaudhary: I’m in agreement with you, but you know, the remedy has already been found out for this. Like, the latest cases in which the appellate authority has decided, i.e. the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal has decided, they have already said that if the delay, caused in delivering the home buyer’s flats or their properties, is on account of something which is beyond the control like a force majeure issues, then in that eventuality, it will not be counted as a default and the entire working of Section 7 or Section 9 is operative on default. So if there is no default on the part of the real-estate developers, then the IBC proceedings will not be initiated and if they’re initiated, they will be terminated on the movement it is found out. Like in the latest case of Raheja Developers, the IBC proceeding have been terminated by the Appellate Tribunal only on this ground that the entire delay was caused beyond the control and based on the force majeure clauses, and therefore there is already a solution that if the real-estate developers whom I understand that you have a soft corner for, but there is no cause of concern on that. Now the judicial tribunals have already found out the way that if it is not your doing, then you are in clear, then there is no default and therefore you should not be put into the CIR process at all.