NEFOMA

GREATER NOIDA: With the NCR Planning Board making it clear last month that the Noida Extension impasse will not end before March this year, the buyers, who have been slapped with cancellation notices by several developers, are now on the war path. They have filed an RTI application with the Reserve Bank of India demanding to know how the banks, both private and government, sanctioned the housing loans for Noida Extension in the first place considering that many developers confess that they had known all along that the area was disputed. The buyers claim that the banks had taken processing fees during sanctioning of their loans for these projects after ascertaining the "authenticity" of these projects and, thus, legalized the transaction.

"The projects in Noida Extension area have remained at a standstill for almost ten months now and, in the absence of the NCRPB approval to the Greater Noida Master Plan, it is unlikely that the situation will improve in the near future," said Devender Kumar, a buyer who has booked a flat with Panchsheel Greens. "The banks halted the disbursement of our loan instalments in July last year rendering one lakh middle class buyers incapable of making any further payment towards our homes. However, we know want to know how did the banks sanction loans in the first place. After all, even as individual buyers could not have ascertained the complete legality of the land sale in the area, even the banks ignored this at that time," he said.

"The banks charged us a processing fee at the time of finalizing our home loans. It seems either they had not done their homework and failed to realize that some farmers had already taken the land acquisition row to the court, or the banks too were in connivance with the developers and the authorities," alleged another buyer, Abhishek Kumar.

All construction work in the Noida Extension-Greater Noida area has been halted in accordance with a Supreme Court order. The apex court has made it mandatory for the Authority to get the changes in its Master Plan 2021 approved by the NCRPB. Meanwhile, even as banks have stopped disbursing loans to existing buyers, the latter have received demand letters from several developers asking for pending instalment and threatening cancellation of bookings otherwise.
Source :Ayesha Arvind, TNN | Feb 10, 2012, 02.05AM IST