PAL-Peugeot land invites fresh auction

A fresh auction will be held for the 5.42 lakh-sq-mt of land belonging to PAL-Peugeot, located near Kalyan-Dombivli, reports HT Correspondent.

A fresh auction will be held for the 5.42 lakh-sq-mt of land belonging to PAL-Peugeot, located near Kalyan-Dombivli. In an earlier case, the bid had turned out to be much lower than the reserve price.

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In the past, auctions have been conducted five times, but every time the highest bid failed to match the reserved price fixed by the court.

Creditors of PAL, including ICICI, had sought an auction after the company went into liquidation.

The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the court receiver to start a fresh auction of the land within four months. The court has also directed fixing of a reserve price for the land before calling the bids.

The high court also said that the winner of the last auction — Citra Developers, a subsidiary of Indiabulls — was entitled to withdraw its winning bid as it was not willing to match the reserved price fixed by the high court earlier.

On the last occasion, Citra’s bid of Rs 676 crore was the highest. Citra had even deposited Rs 169 crore as earnest money. However, the bid price was much lower than then reserve price fixed by a single judge of the court — Rs 1,600 crore. When asked, Citra was not ready to raise the bid to match the reserve price.

PAL-Peugeot workers’ union challenged the order saying Citra could not withdraw its bid.