NBCC moves SC to finish Supertech’s stalled projects

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear an application by NBCC — the Union government’s construction arm — to develop and complete unfinished housing projects of real estate major Supertech, which is facing insolvency proceedings.

A bench headed by justice Sanjiv Khanna agreed to take up the application for hearing on October 1 after homebuyers in some Supertech projects informed the court that NBCC has already submitted its terms and conditions before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), where the insolvency proceedings are pending against the real estate group.

Senior advocate Gopal Jain, appearing virtually for NBCC, agreed to put forth the submissions next week.

Currently, 17 Supertech projects across the country are incomplete, and under the NBCC proposal before NCLAT, the real estate group agreed to the completion of the more than 50,000 housing units. The public sector undertaking has proposed completing seven projects in Noida and Greater Noida under the first phase; five projects in Noida, Greater Noida and Meerut in the second phase; and the remaining five projects in Gurugram, Rudrapur, Bengaluru, and Dehradun in the third phase.

The plan was subject to a set of terms and conditions being approved by the tribunal.

In its application before the top court, NBCC said that considering its proven track record in completing incomplete projects by the Amrapali group under court monitoring, the company seeks to submit proposals and terms of reference for the “feasible Supertech projects” on similar terms.

Advocate ML Lahoty, appearing for homebuyers of Eco Village 2 in Greater Noida, welcomed the NBCC application. Despite the project being included in the first phase of the proposed NBCC construction plan, the members of this project were aggrieved by a direction passed by the top court on May 11, 2023, which had stalled insolvency proceedings regarding this project. The court restrained the committee of creditors from proceeding beyond voting on the resolution plan.

Lahoty informed the court that the homebuyers have sought modification of the May 2023 order, pointing out that crucial information regarding syphoning of funds from Eco Village 2 was not available to the court at the time of passing the order. He said that the transactional audit report of Supertech, released in June 2023, suggested that the Eco Village 2 project is financially sound as it was found that an amount of ₹619 crore was either diverted to other Supertech projects or was syphoned off by the erstwhile promoters of the real estate firm.

NBCC said it will require 12 to 36 months for the completion of various projects, subject to various conditions, including the acceptance of terms of reference, completion of due-diligence or audit of such a project, obtaining requisite permits/approvals from statutory bodies, award of work(s) to contractors, handover of peaceful and vacant possession of project sites to NBCC that are capable of commencement of work, and availability of funds earmarked for each project.

The public sector undertaking proposed having a court committee in place to monitor the completion of projects, and arranged funds to be placed in a designated account in the name of NBCC (I) Limited- Supertech unfinished projects, which will be owned, operated and managed by NBCC through its authorised signatories.

For completion of the projects, NBCC demanded a fee calculated at the rate of 8% on the “Actual Cost of Work” for rendering the project management consultancy services and a marketing fee at the rate of 1% on the sale value of the project.