In a dramatic development, Essel Group’s Subhash Chandra Foundation (SCF) presented to the Hyderabad High Court here on Tuesday that it would pursue the proposal of taking over the assets of scam-tainted Agri-Gold company though it had earlier decided to withdraw that proposal.
A counsel of the SCF conveyed this to a Division Bench of the High Court comprising Justice V. Ramasubramanian and Justice S.V. Bhatt. The Bench was hearing a Public Interest Litigation petition filed by the depositors of Agri-Gold Company.
The submission came as a surprise to the petitioners and depositors of the company as the SCF had filed — during the last hearing — an affidavit before the Division Bench stating that it had decided to withdraw from being an intervenor in the PIL petition. The SCF’s fresh request “to withdraw its earlier proposal of withdrawing from the case” was allowed by the Bench.
However, the Bench made it clear to the SCF’s counsel to ensure there were no further changes in their proposals. “We may impose costs in case of any changes again,” the Bench said. The Judges declined the repeated requests of counsel for Agri-Gold company L. Ravichander to give 10 days time to think about the reserve price of the 10 high-value assets of Agri-Gold company to be auctioned.
The counsel tried to impress upon the Bench that he was seeking time to secure better prices for the assets. The reserve prices quoted by the Andhra Pradesh government were low, he maintained. The Bench sought opinion of counsel for petitioners Sravan, on how to proceed with the auctioning of the 10 high value assets.
After hearing the counsel and others, the Bench observed that the 10 assets could be auctioned in the districts where they were located. For this, the Judges mulled the proposal to constitute three-member committees in the districts concerned to oversee the auction process.
The District Collector and the District Registrar would be members of the the committee. On Friday, the Bench would decide if the District Legal Services Authority Chairman can be made the third member of the committee.
Earlier, AP Advocate-General Dammalapati Srinivas submitted to the Bench that all the 10 high value assets of Agri-Gold Company (identified by Crime Investigation Department) be auctioned simultaneously in the districts they were located.
The Bench directed the Telangana CID officials to present details of ten high-value assets of the company in Telangana.
