Treating Homebuyers As Financial Creditors Not Arbitrary : SC Upholds 2018 IBC Amendment [Read Judgment]

Dismissing a bunch of petitions filed by nearly 200 realtors, the Supreme Court on Friday upheld the amendments made to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code in 2018 to treat homebuyers as financial creditors.In the judgment titled Pioneer Urban Land and Infrastructure Ltd and Anr vs Union of India, the bench of Justices R F Nariman, Sanjiv Khanna and Surya Kant held that the amendments do not violate Article 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution and rejected the argument that they are 'arbitrary, unreasonable, excessive and disproportionate'.The challenge was primarily to the explanation added to Section 5(8)(f) of the Code that "any amount raised from an allottee under a real estate project shall be deemed to be an amount having the commercial effect of a borrowing". Amounts having the commercial effect of borrowing are treated as 'financial debt' as per Section 5(8)(f). Therefore, any amount invested by a person in a real estate project for allotment of apartments will be deemed as "financial debt".The real estate companies raised the following points :Treating homebuyers as financial creditors amounts to treating unequals as equals. This is unreasonable classification.This is contrary to the object of IBC, as a few disgruntled allottees can bring the entire project to standstill.Homebuyers have a separate remedy under the RERA Act for their grievance redressal.Giving advance payment for flat allotment cannot be regarded as 'financial lending'.The bench noted that the amendments were carried out based on the report of the Insolvency Law Committee. The report suggested the amendment in the backdrop of the crisis in Jaypee and Amrapali projects. In Chitra Sharma case, the Supreme Court had permitted Jaypee allottees to participate in the meeting of Committee of Creditors."The Insolvency Law Committee found, as a matter of fact, that delay in completion of flats/apartments has become a common phenomenon, and that amounts raised from home buyers contributes significantly to the financing of the construction of such flats/apartments. This being the case, it was important, therefore, to clarify that home buyers are treated as financial creditors so that they can trigger the Code under Section 7 and have their rightful place on the Committee of Creditors when it comes to making important decisions as to the future of the building construction company, which is the execution of the real estate project in which such home buyers are ultimately to be housed", Court observed.Thus, the Court observed that the amendments were based on the commercial wisdom exercised by the legislature. In commercial matters, the legislature should be given more leeway and the Courts will refrain from interfering. Homebuyers are financial creditorsThe realtors argued that homebuyers can at best be regarded as operational creditors and not financial creditors.The judgment by Justice Nariman stated the following on this point :"what is unique to real estate developers vis-à-vis operational debts, is the fact that, in operational debts generally, what is unique to real estate developers vis-à-vis operational debts, is the fact that, in operational debts generally, when a person supplies goods and services, such person is the creditor and the person who has to pay for such goods and services is the debtor.In the case of real estate developers, the developer who is the supplier of the flat/apartment is the debtor inasmuch as the home buyer/allottee funds his own apartment by paying amounts in advance to the developer for construction of the building in which his apartment is to be found. Another vital difference between operational debts and allottees of real estate projects is that an operational creditor has no interest in or stake in the corporate debtor, unlike the case of an allottee of a real estate project, who is vitally concerned with the financial health of the corporate debtor, for otherwise, the real estate project may not be brought to fruition. Also, in such event, no compensation, nor refund together with interest, which is the other option, will be recoverable from the corporate debtor. One other important distinction is that in an operational debt, there is no consideration for the time value of money – the consideration of the debt is the goods or services that are either sold or availed of from the operational creditor. Payments made in advance for goods and services are not made to fund manufacture of such goods or provision of such services"The Court added : "It is these fundamental differences between the real estate developer and the supplier of goods and services that the legislature has focused upon and included real estate developers as financial debtors. This being the case, it is clear that there cannot be said to be any infraction of equal protection of the laws."No treatment of unequals as equalsIn this regard, the Court said :"So far as unequals being treated as equals is concerned, home buyers/allottees can be...

Treating Homebuyers As Financial Creditors Not Arbitrary : SC Upholds 2018 IBC Amendment [Read Judgment]

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Treating Homebuyers As Financial Creditors Not Arbitrary : SC Upholds 2018 IBC Amendment [Read Judgment]

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