KWIC: Rs 300 cr in pocket, Buddha poster boy keeps home buyers hanging

Even eight years after hundreds of buyers had booked their dream homes at Kolkata West International City (KWIC) in Howrah district, off Kona Expressway, of Universal Success Enterprise owned by Singapore-based businessman Prasoon Mukherjee, possession of six residential towers, along with a club, hospital and school has not been given by the builder till date.

To add to their agony, there is no fixed date that the builder has indicated for the completion of the construction work. What is more compelling is the fact that the buyers have already paid up to 80 per cent amount and the firm has so far collected more than Rs 300 crore.

The construction of only 508 bungalows in clusters A and B has been completed while only 50 per cent and 20 per cent work in clusters C and D respectively has been done so far.

On January 15, 2015, H C Dey, assistant secretary of the state government, wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Police Surajit kar Purakayastha requesting him to conduct a probe into the alleged financial irregularities of the company.

Earlier, Amitava Guha, one of the buyers who is now in Singapore, had lodged a complaint to the state government about the financial irregularities of USE. Interestingly, no report was sent to the state government by the city police. The reports of two other inquiries conducted by Vivek Bharagwaj, the then CEO of KMDA and the state housing department have not yet been published. When contacted, neither the police nor the housing department could say anything about the report.

KWIC was a pet project of former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Prasoon Mukherjee was his poster boy and it is really surprising that a senior bureaucrat now in the rank of a principal secretary was transferred twice — first from Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) and the second time from the industry department just because he was not in Mukherjee’s good books.

KMDA had given 390 acres of land to set up KWIC in 2005 for which the booking had began in 2006. On 80 acres of land, 907 bungalows divided into four clusters — A, B, C and D — were supposed to have come up. The price of the bungalows varied between Rs 21 lakh and Rs 80 lakh. On the other hand, the complex was supposed to have six residential towers called Kolkata West International Heights. Each tower is a G+ 16 storeyed apartment. The proposed buyers have already paid 40 per cent of the amount.

O P Bangur, who has booked a bungalow in cluster C, said: “The former Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya should be arrested as we have all invested money since he had inaugurated the project and during his speech he had mentioned his familiarity with the USE. Even after a decade, my bungalow is not yet ready.”

Prof Mritunjay Chakraborty of IIT-Kharagpur said: “The quality of construction is not at all satisfactory. The firm should pay penalty for the inordinate delay in completing the bungalow.” Abahay Upadhyay, secretary of KWIC Buyers Welfare Association, said: “The buyers are running from pillar to post to know when the project would be completed.”