New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday once again expressed its displeasure with the Sahara Group after market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said that that the group has overvalued its properties and did not hand over all original title deeds of assets worth Rs 20,000 crore as per its direction.
After Sebi told the court that its earlier order has not been complied with by the group, and assets whose documents were given to it is worth much less than Rs 20,000 crore, a bench of justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and J.S. Khehar said, “It is a mockery of our order if it has been complied with in this way”.
The bench, however, refrained from passing any order as Sahara’s arguing counsel was not present in the court.
The bench told the group that no excuses will be entertained on Thursday, when the matter will be taken up.
Sahara gave Sebi documents of two plots of land. One of the two properties is a 106-acre land in Versova, a suburb in Mumbai, which according to it is worth around Rs 19,000 crore and the other is a 200-acre land in Vasai, which it estimates to be worth about Rs 1,000 crore.
The valuation of the properties was challenged by the Sebi, which contended that a portion of the properties were in the “thick” of litigation.
The court had on October 28 directed the group to hand over title deeds of its properties worth Rs 20,000 crore to the Sebi with a warning that failure to comply its order to the satisfaction of the market regulator within three weeks would mean Sahara chief Subrata Roy cannot leave India.
