The fate of the sick Maharashtra Antibiotics and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (MAPL) and its over 250 employees has finally been sealed with the Appellate Authority for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (AAIFR) upholding the orders passed by the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) to wind up the company.
The AAIFR passed its final order at a hearing held at New Delhi a couple of days ago. It was received with a sense of shock by employees who had been living on the edge ever since the company was referred to the BIFR in 1996. After several rounds of meetings in the last two days, the employees are learnt to have decided to move the High Court against the AAIFR order.
The winding up of MAPL is bound to shake the industrial foundation of Vidarbha as the company was considered one of the prestigious units of the region, equipped with the most sophisticated medicine-making machinery.
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In the one-hour-long hearing, the AAIFR decided that the MAPL will have to be closed down as it found the two rehabilitation packages made by private parties unsuitable.
AAIFR's finding was largely based on the fact that the packages were rejected by both Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd, the majority share-holder of MAPL, and Sicom, another large stake holder. Hindustan Antibiotics has a 59 per cent stake in MAPL and Sicom has 33 per cent, while the remaining 8 per cent is with the Industrial Development Bank of India.
After the BIFR passed the winding-up order in July 2000, a rehabilitation package for MAPL was submitted to AAIFR in January 2001 by the EEI Group of Companies.
In June, a group of employees, backed by Pramod Manmode of local Nirmal Ujjwal Co-operative Bank, submitted their rehabilitation proposal. Both these proposals were rejected by Sicom and Hindustan Antibiotics, both of which demanded a one-time settlement of their dues for acceptance of the proposals.