Fighting alone, plot owners exposed to fate, fear & touts

NOIDA EXTENSION: From being the envy of their friends, relatives and colleagues to being reduced to the most desperate straits, the winners of Greater Noida Authority’s draw for housing plots in 2008 have seen it all. Today, with the fate of entire Noida Extension looking uncertain, these 4,000-odd plot owners must fend for themselves.
Unlike the roughly one lakh apartment buyers, whose fates are intertwined with those of their builders, and both of whom have been fighting to be heard through their associations, the plot owners are singly left to their own resources.They spend sleepless nights agonizing over the outcome of the farmers’ petitions before Allahabad High Court, and are hounded throughout the day by agents who want to frighten them into making distress sales.
"When I got this 200 sqm plot in Noida Extension in a draw in 2008, I was told that I was very lucky," says Saket Budhiraja, who got his plot in the 2008 draw among lakhs of applicants. "Three years down the line, I don’t know where my fate is headed" he says.
More than a thousand plots were allotted in different categories in just sectors 2 and 3. "A very conservative estimate would put the total figure of individual plot buyers in Noida Extension at more than 4,000," said a property dealer who did not wish to be
identified.
"The scheme was launched with fanfare; brochures and prospectuses were sold through banks and street-side stalls, and the money was pocketed by Greater Noida Authority," says Budhiraja, adding, "I have paid more than half of my installments, partly through bank loans and partly from my own savings". Although he was to be handed over his plot in 2014, Budhiraja couldn’t trace it on the ground when he visited the site.
While flat buyers have united under different project-specific groups, as also under the Noida Extension Flat-Buyers’ Welfare Association (NEFBWA), which is an umbrella organisation of flat buyers in Noida Extension, to fight their case, the plot owners have failed to unite because they were never told who their neighbours were.
Another plot owner, Sumit Bansal, who works with a private sector firm in Noida, feels his luck has run out on him. "I don’t even know whether I should deposit the next installment, which is due for payment soon, with Greater Noida Authority," says Bansal. "I had been sick for the past several weeks and my tensions have grown with this land issue. I haven’t even been able to contact Greater Noida Authority," he adds. Bansal had won a 120-sqm plot in Sector 3 of Noida Extension in the 2008 draw.
Anupam Tiwary, a 25-year-old working with an airline, was considered lucky by his family when his name popped up in the lottery of 2008. "My father had drawn a lottery ticket in my name under this scheme," says Tiwary, who, too, is paying installments to Greater Noida Authority for the 120-sqm plot that he had won in Sector 3.
However, all that luck has to offer Tiwary these days is phone calls from numerous smalltime property dealers operating in Noida Extension. "They try to coax me into selling my land, now that they know that the stakes are low," says Tiwary. However, he is determined to not dispose of his land under their pressure.
"Right now, I am still saving from my salary to pay for the possession of the plot," says Tiwary.