On 23 July 2019 a two-judge bench of Arun Mishra and U.U. Lalit, JJ. delivered the 270-page Amrapali judgment in exercise of plenary writ jurisdiction under Article 32 of the Constitution. Acting on the findings of a court-ordered Forensic Audit Report, the Court cancelled the Amrapali Group's RERA registration, cancelled the Noida and Greater Noida lease deeds, appointed NBCC (India) Ltd at an 8% commission to complete the stalled projects, appointed Senior Advocate R. Venkataramani as Court Receiver, directed the Enforcement Directorate to investigate offences under FEMA and PMLA, and ordered ICAI disciplinary action against the statutory auditor. Dues recoverable from the authorities and banks were ringfenced to attached promoter assets and were held not to be a charge on the homebuyers or the projects.
On 11 November 2021 a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — U.U. Lalit, Ajay Rastogi and Aniruddha Bose, JJ., the judgment authored by Rastogi J. — answered five framed questions on the constitutional and statutory architecture of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016. The Bench held that the application of the Act to 'ongoing projects' — projects launched before but not completion-certificated by 1 May 2017 — is retroactive in operation and not retrospective, and is constitutionally permissible. The pre-deposit requirement under the proviso to Section 43(5) for promoter appeals was upheld; the Authority's single-member adjudicatory power to award refund-with-interest under Section 18 read with state Rules was upheld; and the refund-with-interest formula under the UP Rules — MCLR + 1% per annum — was read as part of the substantive architecture.
Read through the coordination lens rather than the constitutional-validity lens, Pioneer Urban v. Union of India is the case that built the structural relationship between RERA and the IBC. The three-judge bench held that the two statutes occupy different fields, that Section 88 RERA preserves remedies under other laws additively, that the Section 238 IBC non-obstante clause is engaged only on an actual operational conflict, and that the same homebuyer can simultaneously stand as RERA allottee, CPA consumer and IBC financial creditor. The genuine-allottee/speculative-investor distinction is the IBC's internal abuse-prevention valve, examined at the Section 7 admission stage and reinforced by the Section 65 discipline. This editorial draws the textual map, the field-occupation analysis and the downstream architecture leading to Manish Kumar (2021) and the project-wise CIRP codified by the IBC (Amendment) Act 2026.