MahaRERA allows home-owners of DSK Group to complete stressed project in Pune; directs freezing of promoter's bank account for project

Mumbai: In a first, Maharashtra’s realty regulator has allowed homebuyers in a project of the stressed company DSK Group to complete a stuck project in Pune.

Over 90 percent of the project, christened ‘Sadaphuli’ in Talegaon is completed in six years since it was launched, while the rest will now be completed by buyers who have booked apartments, DSK’s financier Tata Capital Housing Finance and a two-member panel appointed by the realty watchdog, Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA).

DSK has been mired in a series of allegations of impropriety for the last few years, leading to stress in its ongoing projects. Usually, realtors transfer their rights to peers in case of stress, but DSK’s difficulties had put question marks over the future for 161 home buyers.

MahaRERA on 22 October ordered the resolution under sections 7 and 8 of the state’s RERA Act and revoked the registration of the project. While doing so, it allowed homebuyers or the association of allottees (AOA) to execute the remaining construction and register the sale agreements for the project.

The Authority has also directed Tata Capital Housing Finance, an investor in the project and MahaRera designated resolution panel comprising developer Niranjan Hiranandani and consumer rights activist Shirish Deshpande, to assist the AOA to complete the project.

The AOA, Tata and the two-member panel has been asked to formulate a blueprint for completion of the project to be submitted by February next year. The project consists of 279 apartments to be constructed over two phases, and 161 apartments have already been sold.

The first phase, which includes two towers has a total of 184 apartments out of which 100 are already sold or booked. In the second phase, which has 95 apartments, as many as 61 are sold or booked.

Meanwhile, MahaRERA has directed to freeze the bank accounts opened by the promoters of the company in Bank of Maharashtra’s Pune branch for the project until further notice.

It has also suggested filing a caveat application by the AOA and Tata Capital Housing with the NCLT, Mumbai Bench, to ensure that they are heard and the NCLT is apprised of the efforts of the authority in case of a possibility of an operational creditor, if any, initiating insolvency proceedings against the DSK Group.

DSK Group chairman DS Kulkarni and his wife are currently lodged in Yerawada jail in Pune for allegedly cheating nearly 33,000 depositors and investors of nearly Rs 2,043.18 crore.