Dalmia Cement moves SC against NCLAT's order in Binani case
Dalmia Cement (Bharat) petitioned the Supreme Court on Thursday, challenging the appellate tribunal's ruling that upheld Ultratech's plan for Binani Cement and rejected Dalmia's plan calling it "discriminatory" against some creditors. The matter will be brought up for hearing on next Monday, Mahendra Singh, group CEO, Dalmia Cement (Bharat) told media. The NCLAT had on Wednesday passed an order approving Ultratech's resolution plan according to which India's largest cement maker will be paying Rs 7,950 crore for the debt-laden cement asset. Dalmia Cement (Bharat), on the other hand trailed by more than a thousand crore , offering Rs 6,932 crore. The appellate tribunal had said that since the company is not paying some financial creditors like Export Import Bank of India and SBI- Hong Kong in full, it was discriminating against these financial creditors. The tribunal also observed that Dalmia was not paying all operational creditors in full, and hence chose rival Ultratech's plan that paid all classes of creditors in full. Dalmia Bharat, however, will not be raising its bid amount to match or supersede Ultratech's."There is a process of law that we have followed since the beginning and there is no question of revising our bid amount now," Singhi said. The 6 MT Binani Cement owes about Rs 4,000 crore to various lenders and was referred to the NCLT last year in July for resolution. Dalmia Bharat was initially the highest bidder and was also voted by the lenders as the same. However, this changed when Ultratech petitioned the NCLT in March on the ground of seeking a more "transparent way of evaluating the bids" after its revised bid was overlooked by lenders that went ahead and voted for Dalmia Bharat. The lenders were eventually asked by the NCLT to consider Ultratech's bid which in turn sparked off another series of litigations by Dalmia Bharat that contested this order.
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