Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Monday directed the AP government to postpone the auction of properties seized from Agri Gold Group of Companies.
A division bench comprising Justices V. Ramasubramanian and S.V. Bhatt, while hearing a PIL filed by the Agri Gold Depositors and Agents Welfare Association seeking a CBI probe into the scam had on November 7 directed the Additional DGP (CID) of AP to issue notification on November 28 inviting the bids to auction the properties.
When the case came up for hearing before the bench on Monday, L. Ravichander, senior counsel appearing for the Agri Gold Companies, submitted that the properties were in a vast tracts and there was a possibility that they would fetch more revenue if divided into small pieces and auctioned.
Counsel appearing for the AP government placed the valuation reports prepared by sub-registrar, government recognised valuator and the experts from the real estate sector with regard to the properties located in and around Vijayawada city.
While stating that it will decide a rate after perusing the valuation reports, the bench told counsel for the AP government that instead of putting 85 acres in Keesara of Krishna district as a one block for auction, the possibilities of placing the property for auction by dividing it into 8 blocks should be examined. The case was posted to November 28.
While hearing the Akshaya Gold case, the bench told the governments of AP and TS to take steps on the lines of Agri Gold case to auction the properties and repay the depositors.
The bench directed both the states to identify unencumbered properties belonging to the respondent company and to take possession of those properties and handed them to the three-man committee constituted to oversee the auction.
The bench was hearing a petition by Akshaya Gold Customers and Agents welfare Associations seeking to attach the properties of the firm and repay the depositors.
Krishna Prakash, special counsel appearing for AP, told the court that 1,81,114 persons invested in Akshaya Gold and names of some investors were reflected more than once. He sought time to file the verified list in the list of depositors.
He urged the court to grant time to place the correct verified list before the court. The bench granted two weeks to do so.
