8 Years After Booking, Still Waiting For Possession: How Godrej Projects Are Harassing Homebuyers?
In December 2025, the Gurugram bench of the Haryana Real Estate Regulatory Authority recorded a clear finding against Godrej Real View Developers. The authority directed the promoter to pay interest at 10.8 percent per annum to a Lucknow couple for the delayed possession of their flat in Godrej Meridien-I, Sector 106, Gurugram.
The numbers are specific. Malik Ram and Sarita Verma booked a second-floor unit in Tower 2 of Phase I for approximately ₹1.75 crore under a construction-linked plan. By May 2024 they had paid nearly ₹1.74 crore, which is virtually the entire consideration. The agreement for sale was executed on 27 September 2019. It fixed the possession date for Phase I as 30 September 2020. After the six-month COVID-related relief granted by the authority, the revised due date became 30 March 2023.
Physical possession was finally handed over on 27 November 2024. The occupation certificate had been obtained on 31 March 2023; an offer of possession followed in May 2024; the conveyance deed was executed in November 2024. The gap between the revised contractual deadline and actual handover was therefore measured in months that stretched beyond a year.
The authority examined the promoter’s explanation — nationwide lockdowns, labour shortages, cost escalations, and repeated construction bans linked to pollution in the NCR — and rejected the claim that these events justified further delay beyond the relief already granted. Seasonal pollution-related curbs, the order noted, were foreseeable. The promoter was held to have violated Sections 11(4)(a) and 18(1) of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act. The allottees, having paid nearly the full price, were held entitled to monthly interest from 30 March 2023 until the permissible cut-off linked to possession.
A second, more recent order follows a similar trajectory. In July 2026 the same regulatory authority directed Godrej Highview to hand over possession of a residential unit in the Godrej Nature Plus project and to pay statutory delay-possession interest until actual handover. The buyers, Ravi Kant Thakral, Minakshi Thakral and Anuj Thakral, had booked the flat in Tower T4 in 2018. The contractual possession date was 30 June 2023. After the COVID extension the revised date stood at 30 December 2023. The allottees had paid approximately ₹89.3 lakh against a total sale consideration of around ₹1.2 crore. Possession had still not been offered.
The authority again rejected additional force-majeure claims, observing that periodic construction bans and labour shortages were recurring events that could not indefinitely suspend contractual obligations. It directed the developer to obtain the occupation certificate, deliver the unit in habitable condition, and pay delay interest from the due date until actual handover. It also restrained the levying of charges not envisaged in the buyer’s agreement.
These two orders are not isolated footnotes. They sit inside a longer sequence of regulatory interventions involving Godrej-linked projects in Gurugram, that revolves around homebuyer harassment.
Project-extension applications have been scrutinised; in at least one earlier instance an application was rejected for non-compliance and the project account directed to be frozen. Refund orders have been passed in matters where homebuyers alleged they were induced by Godrej branding and marketing even when the formal developer was a joint-venture entity. The common thread is delay measured against contractual dates, followed by regulatory direction to compensate or to deliver.
From the vantage point of a homebuyer who has already paid the overwhelming majority of the price, several questions follow directly from the numbers.
How many months of interest at 10.8 percent are required to compensate for the dual burden of continuing to service a home loan while simultaneously paying rent or forgoing the use of a home that was supposed to have been ready years earlier? In the Meridien case the buyers had paid ₹1.74 crore out of ₹1.75 crore by May 2024, yet physical possession arrived only in late November 2024. What is the cumulative carrying cost — interest on the loan, rent, and opportunity cost — that an allottee absorbs while waiting for a regulatory order that merely restores the statutory rate of interest?
When an authority has already granted a six-month COVID extension and then rejects further force-majeure claims on the ground that pollution bans are recurring and foreseeable, what does that imply for the reliability of the original possession timeline marketed to buyers? The agreement in the Meridien matter fixed September 2020. The revised date became March 2023. Actual handover occurred in November 2024. How many such successive extensions, formal or de-facto, can a buyer reasonably be expected to absorb before the original promise loses practical meaning?
In the Nature Plus matter the booking occurred in 2018. The due date, even after COVID relief, was the end of 2023. The July 2026 order was still directing possession and interest. Eight years after the initial commitment of capital, the regulatory process was still being invoked to enforce delivery. What does that timeline reveal about the gap between the marketing of a “reputed” brand and the lived experience of the allottee who has already paid more than seventy percent of the consideration?
The interest rate of 10.8 percent is itself a statutory construct — linked to the State Bank of India’s marginal cost of lending rate plus a prescribed spread. It is not a discretionary penalty invented by the authority; it is the rate the law provides when possession is delayed. Yet each order still requires the homebuyer to file a complaint, engage representation, and wait for adjudication. How many allottees simply absorb the delay because the cost and uncertainty of the complaint process itself outweigh the prospect of eventual interest?
Project-extension applications and non-compliance findings add another layer. When a promoter seeks further time under Section 6 of the Act and the authority responds by recording deficiencies, issuing show-cause notices, or, in some instances, directing the freezing of the project account, what does that signal about the ongoing monitoring of registered projects? The public notices inviting objections from allottees are themselves evidence that the regulatory process continues long after the original registration period.
The pattern that emerges from the public record is therefore not one of isolated administrative lapses. It is a sequence of contractual possession dates that are missed, force-majeure arguments that are examined and often limited, and regulatory orders that restore interest or compel delivery after the buyer has already paid the bulk of the price. In the Meridien case the payment was virtually complete; the delay continued. In the Nature Plus case the payment exceeded seventy percent; the order for possession and interest still had to be extracted years later.
For a homebuyer evaluating a Godrej project, or for one already inside and confronting delay, the questions are concrete and numerical. How many documented RERA findings of delayed possession, each accompanied by an interest directive at rates around 10.8 percent, are required before the cumulative record is treated as a material risk factor rather than a series of individual disputes?
When buyers have paid ₹1.74 crore out of ₹1.75 crore and still wait past the revised deadline, what practical protection does the original agreement actually provide? And when an authority must repeatedly reject additional force-majeure claims and order both delivery and interest, what does that say about the balance of power between the allottee who has already paid and the promoter who continues to control the timeline?
The December 2025 Meridien order and the July 2026 Nature Plus order do not invent the grievances. They quantify them with payment figures, contractual dates, revised deadlines, and actual handover dates. The interest rate is fixed by statute. The violations cited are specific sections of the RERA Act. The questions they raise belong to every homebuyer who has already committed the larger part of the price and is still waiting for the keys.
