The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has delivered a significant verdict in favor of a flat buyer. The Court ruled that a buyer’s statutory right to claim interest for the delay in handing over possession is not extinguished simply because the builder has eventually handed over the flat.
Justice Prashant Kumar issued this order while dismissing an appeal filed by Antriksh Developers and Promoters Private Limited regarding a RERA appeal case concerning the ‘Antriksh Golf View’ project in Noida.
The High Court observed that there is no fixed time limit prescribed under RERA for claiming interest due to delay. Even while remaining part of the project, a buyer is entitled to interest for every month of delay until possession is actually handed over. The buyer, Shyam Sundar Agarwal, had booked a flat in the Sector-78, Noida project in 2010. According to the agreement, possession was to be handed over by November 2012. The builder offered possession in May 2017, but did so without the Occupancy Certificate or other necessary documents. The RERA Appellate Tribunal had directed the builder to pay interest on the deposited amount for the period from December 2012 to May 2017 at a rate of 1% above the MCLR.
Subsequently, the builder argued in the High Court that the project was delayed due to an order by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The builder contended that there was a ban on construction and the issuance of occupancy certificates within a 10-kilometer radius of the Okhla Bird Sanctuary. The High Court rejected this argument.
The Court noted that, according to the builder’s own submission, the project was completed in 2014, and an application for the Occupancy Certificate was also filed that same year. Therefore, the builder could not simultaneously claim that the project was complete while also arguing that it could not be finished due to the NGT’s ban. The Court further observed that the NGT’s stay order was imposed in August 2013, whereas the contractual deadline for handing over possession was November 2012; this implies that the builder was already in default prior to the imposition of the stay. The Bench stated that the benefit of the ‘zero period’—as recognized by the Supreme Court—would be limited to that specific duration and could not cover delays that had occurred beforehand.
