New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave 15 days more to the Sahara Group to deposit Rs 552 crore with SEBI and extended its chief Subrata Roy’s parole till July 15, warning that this was last extension of deadline and his Aamby Valley township near Pune will be auctioned if he fails to cough up the money.
A Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra shot down an application to seek more time to deposit the money the group could not raise by July 4, noting that it has so far deposited only Rs 1500.40 crore against the dues of Rs 9,000 crore on the principal amount of Rs 24,000 crore.
On April 27, the court had accepted two post-dated cheques, one of Rs 1500 dated June 15 and another of Rs 552 crore dated July 15 as an assurance of payment from Roy. If the second cheque of Rs 552 crore is not honoured by July 20 for deposit in the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)-Sahara refund account, the court said that it would begin the process of auction of its Maharashtra property, Aambey Valley, which is on hold till now.
Vinod Sharma, official liquidator of the Bombay High Court, has already submitted the terms and conditions for the auction of the Aamby Valley project and sought its approval to go ahead. On April 17, the court had directed the auction of Aamby Valley after Sahara failed to deposit Rs 5,092.64 crore with SEBI. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Sahara, prayed for extension of time as the company was facing difficulty with the sale of its properties.
