PURI CONSTRUCTION PVT. LTD. Vs. SHAILESH GUPTA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Consumer Complaint 335/2017 was instituted by the respondent Shailesh Gupta and 47 other complainants against the petitioner Puri Construction Pvt. Ltd. before the learned National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission ("the learned NCDRC") under Sec. 12(1)(c)[12. Manner in which complaint shall be made. -

(2.) The complaint averred that, relying on advertisements issued by the petitioner, the complainants booked apartments in the "Aanand Vilas" project by making an initial payment of ? 7.5 lakhs for 3 BHK and ? 10 lakhs for 4 BHK apartments. It was alleged, in the complaint, that (i) the application form provided to the complainants and other investors in the petitioner"s project did not contain relevant or substantial information about the project or the time within which it would be completed (ii) the Provisional Allotment letter, which was forwarded to the investors/apartment buyers nearly a month after the filing of the application form, stated, inter alia, that, if the signed application form was not received back within 15 days of receipt by the concerned apartment buyer/investor, the offer of allotment would stand automatically cancelled and the money deposited by the investor/buyer would be refunded after deducting 15% of the sale consideration of the flat as earnest money, without interest, (iii) the Apartment Buyer Agreement (ABA) which subsequently came to be executed between the buyers and the petitioner was a one sided document containing several arbitrary and coercive clauses; moreover, it enhanced the period within which possession of the flats were to be handed over to the buyers to 54 months, as against 36 months held out at the pre-launched stage, (iv) the buyers/investors were coerced to pay several charges such as Preferential Location Charges (PLC), car parking, club furnishing charges and fire fighting charges, which found no place in the initial application form provided to them, which they had filled in and submitted, (v) though 80-90 % of the payments demanded by the petitioner had been paid by the complainants, the complainants were forced to honour all the allegedly illegal demands of the petitioner and (vi) the petitioner was allotting identical flats to outsiders at nearly half the price at which they were allotted to the complainants.

(3.) These acts of the petitioner, it was alleged, constituted "unfair trade practices" within the meaning of Sec. 2(r)(1)(ix)[(ix) materially misleads the public concerning the price at which a product or like products or goods or services, have been or are, ordinarily sold or provided, and, for this purpose, a representation as to price shall be deemed to refer to the price at which the product or goods or services has or have been sold by sellers or provided by suppliers generally in the relevant market unless it is clearly specified to be the price at which the product has been sold or services have been provided by the person by whom or on whose behalf the representation is made;] of the Act, as the petitioner was effectively misappropriating hard earned money of the investors.