15.8.17

Bids invited for Aamby Valley


The auction process of the beleaguered Sahara Group's Aamby Valley City began on Monday with the official liquidator inviting bids at a reserve price of Rs.37,392 crore.

The development comes three days after the Supreme Court declined to entertain the Sahara Group's plea to postpone the auction of the prime hill station property located in Pune district. The auction is part of the efforts to partly recover the pending dues of the Sahara Group to various lenders.

Bombay high court OL Vinod Sharma on Monday issued notices for the public auction of “sale/lease“ on an “as-is-where-is-whatever-there-is“ of the Aamby Valley City, located around 90 km from Pune. Sharma stated that with the huge quantum of properties to be disposed, the auction will be conducted in two phases spread over two days.

The notice said the property comprises an integrated hill-city township-Aamby Valley City Development. The notice said the Aamby Val ley township was the first-of its-kind “megalopolis“, spread over 6,761.64 acres. It also includes land measuring 1,409.87 acres surrounding this project and another 321.66 acres within adjoining Satara district.

The notice also clarifies that the properties being auctioned are being sold/leased along with all the subsisting licences, consents, permissions, registrations, approvals, grants and pending applications as per the SC order dated July 25, 2017. Meanwhile, the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority said that only after the auction was completed would it look into any permission sought by the new buyers. The Aamby valley comes under the PMRDA's jurisdiction.

“Our role will come in after the auction process is over. If the new buyers want to make any changes within the project (like constructions), we will look into their applications. As of now, it is a private auction and we will not interfere,“ PMRDA chief Kiran Gitte said. Recently, the Lavasa hill station had come under the PMRDA's jurisdiction and all work of checking for permissions came in its ambit. Gitte said both the district collector and the PMRDA would wait for the auction to be completed and the authority would check the records of the buyers only if the state government asked it to intervene. Officials from the district collectorate also said they would get into the issue only if they are asked to.

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