(This story originally appeared in on Feb 23, 2018)

NEW DELHI: Assuring homes to thousands of flat-buyers who have invested in Amrapali group’s housing projects , the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the company’s promoters to give an undertaking to complete construction in a time-bound manner and made it clear that they would be sent to jail if the promise was not fulfilled.A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy decided to monitor construction under Amrapali’s projects as more than 41,000 flat buyers were facing uncertainty due to the builder’s failure to hand over possession despite the buyers paying substantial amount towards the cost of flats and initiation of insolvency proceedings against the company.As the 43 projects being developed by the group are at different stages of construction, the bench decided to deal with each project separately and first took up Amrapali Leisure Park project in Greater Noida (West). The project contains 19 towers and around 1665 flats.Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the company along with lawyer Gaurav Bhatia, told the bench that the project was nearing completion and just finishing work was required. He told the bench that flats could be handed over to the buyers within 15 months and an investment of Rs 87.28 crore was required.The bench said the promoters should deposit the money before the court and it could be released to the company to meet the expenses. Kumar, however, said the company was not in a position to deposit the money in court and that the firm could sell its commercial floor space index (FSI) to raise the money. He assured the bench that the flats would be constructed within the proposed time-line.Counsel for home-buyers — Ajit Sinha and M L Lahoty — contended that they had no faith in the company as it had never fulfilled any promise. The bench, however, assured them that the promoters would have to give an undertaking and they would face the consequences if they failed to comply with it.“They (promoters) will have to give undertaking and if it is not complied then we will send them to jail,” the bench said directing the promoters to file the undertaking by March 7.It also directed the promoters to file proposals given by 13 real estate firms that had shown interest to collaborate with Amrapali for completing construction and if they were ready to give undertaking to the court to hand over the flats in a time-bound manner. The court will take up Amrapali’s Silicon valley projects on March 15.