NBCC Submits Final Bid To Buy Jaypee Infra; Suraksha Seeks More Time

State-owned NBCC on Friday submitted its final bid to acquire Jaypee Infratech Ltd (JIL) while rival Suraksha group sought more time to make the final offer for the debt-laden realty firm under the insolvency resolution process, sources said.

According to the sources, NBCC has submitted the final bid and it is compliant with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) provisions and a Supreme Court order passed in March this year.

Suraksha group has written a letter to creditors seeking seven more days to further sweeten its last bid, which was submitted on May 18. The group also wants to reduce the timeline to complete flats from its earlier proposal of 42 months for deliveries, the sources said.

However, it was not immediately clear whether Suraksha group will get additional time to submit the bid, they added.

Last week, financial creditors of embattled JIL decided to give more time to NBCC and Suraksha group to submit their final bids.

The two-day voting process, which began on May 27, was conducted to decide whether a further extension should be given to both the contenders.

In its meeting held on May 24, the Committee of Creditors (CoC) of JIL decided to defer the voting process on the Suraksha group's bid and conduct voting process for allowing both parties to submit their final offers.

On May 20, the CoC decided to put Suraksha group's offer to vote and rejected NBCC's bid citing non-compliance related to its proposal for dissenting creditors.

Protesting against its bid being declared as non-compliant, NBCC had written a strong letter to JIL's Interim Resolution Professional (IRP) Anuj Jain and also submitted a 14-page addendum to its bid to clarify concerns raised on the treatment of dissenting creditors.

Subsequently, the fresh round of voting process was initiated.

This is the fourth round of the bidding process for JIL, which went into insolvency procedings in August 2017 after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) admitted an application by an IDBI Bank-led consortium.

In the first round of insolvency proceeding, the Rs 7,350-crore bid of Lakshadweep, part of Suraksha Group, was rejected by lenders.

The CoC had rejected the bids of Suraksha Realty and NBCC in the second round held in May-June 2019.

The matter reached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) and then the apex court. In November 2019, the Supreme Court directed that the revised bids be invited only from NBCC and Suraksha.

Then, in December 2019, the CoC approved the resolution plan of NBCC with a 97.36 per cent vote in favour of the offer during the third round of the bidding process. In March 2020, NBCC had got approval from the NCLT to acquire JIL.

However, the order was challenged before the NCLAT and later in the Supreme Court, which on March 24 this year, ordered that fresh bids should be invited only from NBCC and Suraksha.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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