New Delhi: Tasked by markets regulator Sebi to sell land parcels of Saharas, HDFC Realty and SBI Capital Markets have initiated the process for e-auctioning 61 properties owned by the beleaguered group across the country. While HDFC Realty has pegged the circle rate value of 31 properties to be auctioned by it at about Rs 2,400 crore, SBI Cap would auction another 30 land properties with an estimated market value of about Rs 4,100 crore.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) roped in HDFC Realty and SBI Cap after being asked by the Supreme Court to initiate the process of selling Sahara properties whose titles have been deposited with it by the group. Following a go-ahead from the Court, the two entities have put in place a mechanism to auction as many as 61 properties put together.
These properties are located in various states including Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. The assets being sold include land parcels, agricultural land as well as residential, commercial and industrial properties.
HDFC Realty said these "land parcels shall be available for sale through e-auction whose date will be declared through a public notice". Besides, SBI Caps has prepared an information dossier having details of all 30 properties including location map.
"The entire auction process of these 30 properties would be completed in next four months and advertisement for the first five properties is likely to be published in this week," sources said. As per the court directions, these properties cannot be sold at less than 90 per cent of circle rates. After spending two years in jail, Sahara chief Subrata Roy is currently out on parole.
He was sent to jail on the orders of the Supreme Court in a long running dispute with Sebi. The Minister said, "Bankers had left. As regards the environment and forest clearance, no file was cleared in 2.5 years. The proposals for railway overbridges were stuck for three years.
Land acquisition was not happening, there were litigations. All important projects like Delhi-Jaipur, Delhi-Dehradun (highways) were stuck. Economic viability was not there." How to bring back things on rail was a big challenge and marathon meeting with bankers, stakeholders, developers and officials bore fruits, he said.
"I had clearly said that where the government is at fault then accept it and do not make it a prestige issue. There are mistakes but check whether it is mala fide or bona fide. If it is bona fide and if there are faults of the government, we cannot penalise the contractors. We have corrected our flaws now," he said.
Now there is a complete turnaround and the public private partnership that was at a standstill has become vibrant with the government's new hybrid model. "Seventeen projects have started on hybrid mode now and another 25 are in pipeline," he said.
Under the new model, the government provides 40 per cent grant in aid while the rest has to be borne by the developer who is awarded the project with at least 80 per cent land acquisition and with all necessary clearances.
The Minister said to further accelerate projects, he has given instructions to officials on expediting the decision making process and warned them against sitting on files for too long.
"It takes three to four months for a simple decision. I have requested the PMO to find out a solution to reform the system. I have briefed the Prime Minister how the projects are getting delayed.
I have made it clear that no officials can sit on any file beyond three days. If anyone holds it beyond three days then action will be taken," the Minister said. He said that concerted efforts had expedited road projects and the road building pace that was barely 2 km a day when the Narendra Modi government took over has reached around 24 km a day.
A very important step the Ministry has taken is to build cement concrete roads in place of traditional bitumen roads and 95 lakh tonnes cement has been committed by 37 cement makers at a very affordable price, he said.
Rating agencies recently said concerted efforts made to address execution bottlenecks have yielded positive results and have reflected in the 39 per cent increase in the pace of NH executions.
The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways plans to increase both awards and execution in the current fiscal by 2.5 times, from that of the FY2016 levels and for NHAI, the targets are more steep with target execution of 8,000 km and target awards at 15,000 km. The target for the current fiscal is almost four times higher than what was achieved during the last fiscal.
