NCLT directs Bhushan Power creditors to consider bid of Liberty House

Liberty House Group was allowed to participate in the bidding process for stakes in Bhushan Power & Steel Limited by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), on Monday.

The tribunal directed Bhushan Power's Committee of Creditors (CoC) to consider the bid placed by industrialist Sanjeev Gupta's company Liberty House. The company is a international business house with operations in ferrous and non-ferrous commodities, metal recycling and advanced engineering products. The CoC had rejected Liberty House's bid as it was submitted after the deadline set for tendering the bid. The tribunal ruled that the disqualification only on basis of failing to keep the deadline is inappropriate.

Liberty House had challenged the resolution professional decision to reject its bid in NCLT on February 26. The bid placed by Liberty House was not opened and Tata Steel was declared the winning bidder for the debt-ridden company in March.

Punjab National Bank is leading the consortium of lenders in this solvency proceeding against Bhushan Power and Steel, which in total owes close to Rs. 45,000 crore to banks and around Rs. 5,000 crore to PNB alone. The resolution proceeding is expected to be completed by June 23.

Meanwhile, the stock of PNB was at Rs. 94.30 per share, up 0.75 per cent during Monday's post lunch session, while the benchmark index was at BSE Sensex was at 34,567.87, down 152.29 points or 0.44 per cent.