1,800 Amrapali homebuyers, including Dhoni, told to clear dues in 15 days

Former Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni is among over 1,800 homebuyers of Amrapali housing projects in Noida who have been asked by a Supreme Court-appointed receiver to start making payments of their outstanding dues within 15 days.

The allotment of flats booked by these homebuyers will be "automatically cancelled" if the flat owners fail to register their name in Customer Data maintained by the court receiver and also do not start making payment within 15 days from the public notice issued on Thursday.

Dhoni could not be reached immediately for comments. In April 2016, Dhoni had resigned as brand ambassador of Amrapali, which is now defunct.

Amrapali Stalled Projects Investment Reconstruction Establishment (ASPIRE), which has been formed to complete the stalled projects in Noida and Greater Noida, published the notice through an advertisement in a leading newspaper.

State-owned NBCC has been asked to complete construction of more than 20 housing projects with an estimated investment of over Rs 8,000 crore under the monitoring of a court-appointed committee.

After the takeover of Amrapali projects by the Supreme Court, all homebuyers were asked to register their details and make balance payments.

In the advertisement, the Supreme Court-appointed receiver said the notice is meant for those homebuyers who have taken no steps after the apex court judgement in July 2019.

As per 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.

A message sent to Pandey also remained unanswered.

The apex court receiver has issued notice to homebuyers in Noida projects and a separate notice will be published for buyers of Greater Noida projects shortly.

Homebuyers named in the list have not filled in their data online through Office of Receiver's website receiveramrapali.in and have also not paid any amount of their outstanding dues into UCO Bank (up to August 17) as reported to the court.

"Consequently, they are to be treated as defaulters and their units are liable to be cancelled," the notice said.

The court receiver said the notice has been issued to homebuyers to give them one final opportunity to affirm their interest in respective allotments and take possession on completion, to register in the Customer Data maintained by the Office of Receiver for the purpose and to start making immediate payments of the balance due as per the payment schedule.

"Failure to register in Customer Data and to start making payment within 15 days from this notice will lead to automatic cancellation of allotments," it said.

Last month, the Supreme Court initiated the process to cancel the bookings of over 9,500 Amrapali project flats, which are unclaimed or booked in the name of fictitious persons or are benami property, to fund stalled projects.

On August 14, the apex court had said it would direct that a 15-day notice be issued to the 9,538 buyers to update their registration and make payments, failing which these units would be considered unsold and auctioned off.

A bench of Justices U U Lalit and Ajay Rastogi had said it will pass an order on the issue after advocate ML Lahoty, appearing for homebuyers, said they have submitted a note earlier that the unsold inventory and flats booked on fictitious names, as identified in a forensic audit, need to be resold to generate funds for pending projects.

Lahoty's submission was supported by senior advocate R Venkataramani, the apex court-appointed receiver (a neutral third-party custodian for property who is granted certain powers by court), who said such owners may be given one last chance.

Earlier, the court-appointed forensic auditors Pawan Agrawala and Ravi Bhatia in their initial report to the court submitted that 5,229 unsold flats include those booked by Amrapali for just Rs 1, Rs 11 and Rs 12 per square feet.

More such flats came to the court's notice subsequently, taking the total number of unclaimed flats to 9,538. The court had asked for the appointment of a valuer to ascertain the true value of these properties.

The Supreme Court in its July 23, 2019 verdict had ordered the cancellation of the registration of the Amrapali Group under real estate law RERA, and ousted it from prime properties in the NCR by nixing the land leases.

Amrapali Group directors Anil Kumar Sharma, Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar are behind bars on the apex court's order.