SC assigns official receiver to manage Aamby Valley
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the official receiver at the Bombay High Court to take over the management of affairs of luxury township Aamby Valley (near Pune), amid fears of encroachment and the possibility of not finding any bidder for it. The move will end control and possession of the Sahara group over the ~37,000 crore property, spread across 43 sq km near Lonavla, on the Mumbai-Pune Highway. N SUNDARESHA SUBRAMANIAN writes
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the official receiver at the Bombay High Court to take over the management of affairs of luxury township Aamby Valley (near Pune), amid fear of encroachment and the possibility of not finding any bidder for it.
The official receiver is different from the official liquidator, earlier appointed by the court to conduct the auction of the township. The move will end control and possession of the Sahara group over the ~37,000-crore property, spread across 43 sq km off Lonavla, on the Mumbai-Pune Highway.
In an order, the bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and judges Ran jan Go go ian dA K Si kris aid :“The duty of the receiver is to see the valuation is not reduced and the property is maintained.”
The Court had ordered the township’s auction earlier this year, after the group failed to pay the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) sums due by the court’s 2012 order. The SC had originally ordered Sahara India Real Estate and Sahara Housing Invest Corp to refund ~24,029 crore raised from 29.6 million investors, along with an interest of 15 per cent. Sahara initially repaid only ~5,120 crore and claimed the rest was refunded to the investors directly. The court did not buy this argument and sent group chief Subrata Roy to Delhi’s Tihar jail in 2014.
Roy was released on parole in 2016 and some installments have been paid. However, the delay has caused total dues to balloon to over ~40,000 crore, with accruing interest. The court ordered the auction of Aamby Valley as the final option to end the proceedings that have dragged on for seven years.
On Thursday, on reports of obstruction by the group, the chief justice said, “if the man has to be sent to jail” to end the matter, it would happen. Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the Sahara group, objected to the proposal to appoint a receiver, saying there was no such move at the time the auction was ordered initially and a separate application had to be filed.