BENGALURU: This is the realty: even if you buy an apartment from a reputed builder, you may still have to bear long delays before you get what you paid for. And in the meantime, you end up paying not only a major portion of your salary towards housing loan EMI, but also continue to pay rent for your current accommodation! It’s the plight of many who have bought flats at Mantri Alpyne, a property in Uttarahalli, customers of Mantri Developers have alleged.
“I was supposed to have gotten possession of my flat in November 2014. But I am continuing to pay a Rs 15,000 rent for my current house in addition to the huge loan instalment to the bank,” rued Vinay Hegde, who bought a flat at Alpyne Mantri.
“Our weekends are wasted protesting against the delay even after paying a premium for the flats.” Worse, some clients even enrolled their children into schools in Uttarahalli, trusting Mantri to handover the flats in time. Now, the children are being forced to travel great distances to the schools.
Another customer, Sagar Gondkar, said 80 per cent of the project had been completed about a year ago, but since then the project had been delayed. “We suspect that the builder needs to pay about Rs 1 crore to the BWSSB, and complete some formalities for meters to be installed so that Bescom can provide power supply”, Gondkar said. “As per the agreement, it is the duty of the builder to provide us all utilities before we occupy the flat. They have breached this condition."
Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Snehal Mantri, Director, HR and Marketing, refuted the allegations saying that Mantri had announced possession from January 2016 and over 30 families had already settled in, with power and water supply. In some cases, Snehal said, Mantri was even paying customers’ current rents. She sought to reassure customers saying, “Every customer will get whatever they have been promised at the time of booking a flat”, and rubbished allegations that they were deliberately delaying the project.
