Supreme Court rejects Dalmia Bharat's plea challenging NCLT's Binani order

MUMBAI: The apex court Thursday rejected a Dalmia Bharat plea that had sought a stay on an order allowing Binani Cement’s lenders to consider UltraTech’s revised bid, even as the resolution professional weighed the option of filing an appeal to seek the removal of ‘negative remarks’ contained in the May 2 directive.

The Supreme Court told Dalmia Bharat that it does not want to intervene at this juncture since an appeal with the NCLAT is also pending to be heard on May 22. However, Dalmia Bharat is free to come back to it after the NCLAT has given its order.

Separately, the resolution professional of Binani Cement may on Friday file an appeal with the appellate tribunal asking it to direct the NCLT to remove ‘negative remarks’ in the May 2 order, sources aware of the development told ET.


Besides directing lenders and the RP to consider UltraTech's revised bid along with Dalmia Bharat's offer, the order passed by the Kolkata bench of NCLT on May 2 had also contended that the RP had, on many events during the resolution of the company, violated the objective of the bankruptcy code.

The NCLT judges had arrived at this conclusion after going through the various applications filed by Binani Cement, UltraTech Cement, and operational creditors of the debt-laden company. Vijaykumar V Iyer of Deloitte, the resolution professional, is likely to approach the appellate tribunal to seek the removal of such remarks.

“The entire decision of the RP and CoC in respect of identifying one resolution plan from among six plans and denying opportunity to have negotiation to so as to raise the bid amount by the willing bidders other than the H1 bidder is found vitiated that they have acted against the objective of the code and acted against the interest of various stakeholders of the corporate debtor and also acted unfairly, arbitrarily and against the interest of the competing bidder including UltraTech,” the order read.