Apex court halts Unitech board’s takeover by Centre, stays company tribunal order
NEWDELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday halted a government takeover of embattled real estate company Unitech after the Centre apologised to the apex court for moving the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
A day after Chief Justice Dipak Misra questioned the government for approaching the NCLT despite the top court hearing petitions related to Unitech, Attorney General KK Venugopal said the government should not have approached the tribunal.
“Extremely sorry for what has happened. It should have not happened like this,” the AG told the bench, which then stayed the NCLT’S December 8 order suspending the company’s board. With this, the deadline for government to nominate directors also gets suspended.
“We appreciate the stand taken by the AG. The stay of NCLT order would meet the ends of justice,” the bench said. Unitech’s counsel, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, too praised Venugopal for the “fair stand” he took. “Its only because of him that this matter has got sorted,” the counsel said.
Unitech, through its directors Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra had moved the top court against NCLT according permission to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to nominate directors, saying it went against the apex court’s direction to the company to refund buyers of flats in its housing projects.
The Supreme Court had allowed Sanjay Chandra to negotiate with suitable buyers from jail and sell assets and generate funds.
“It’s disturbing. We are hearing the matter and the NCLT passes an order. Shouldn’t you (Centre) have come to us and taken leave of this court before filing an application there (NCLT),” SC had asked additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, on Tuesday.
“We were never given any time to respond. The tribunal could have not exercised its power in such a way where no hearing was given to us,” Rohatgi told the court. Seeking suspension of the order, he said: “I am aggr- ieved by the manner in which the order was passed. If a copy was given to us, we would’ve responded.”