 "Engines rev up on PACL luxury car auction")
“Five or six people have already seen the vehicles since morning,” Rajinder Singh, the caretaker of the farm house where these vehicles are kept told Business Standard around lunch time on Sunday.
The vehicles are being put on auction by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) under the aegis of Supreme court-appointed committee headed by retired Chief Justice of India R M Lodha. The Lodha committee is supervising the Supreme Court ordered process of selling PACL’s assets across the country and refunding Rs 49,100 crore collected from some 56.5 million investors.
The other five vehicles, which are in a Gurgaon workshop and a Paschim Vihar location, will be available for inspection later this week. The e-auction, being conducted by state-owned firm MSTC India is scheduled on August 30.
Finding the vehicles in Badkhalsa was not an easy task.
A few kilometres drive from Delhi’s Singhu Border on the road to Karnal one finds a blue board on a metal arch on the right side of the highway welcoming visitors saying ‘Badkhalsa 1.2 km’. Locals are clueless about an auction of the luxury cars, which have found a temporary home in their village. Neither ‘Sebi’ nor ‘MSTC’ ring a bell. Some direct us to the local workshop, others to the nearby mall. One shopkeeper gives the details of a place “where a few people have got together”, which turns out to be a panchayat meeting.
A family in a BMW also joined the hunt for the location. “We were on the way to Chandigarh. Wanted to see the vehicles. Even we are trying to find where the vehicles are.”
An official of MSTC India, which is conducting the auction, first says “Even I do not know where exactly in Badkhalsa.” On some persuasion, he shares the details of the caretaker adding, “The details are all there in the bid document.”
Singh, the care taker of the farmhouse, asks us to look for a ‘big black gate’, adding: “We are the only farm in Badkhalsa, just a few hundred metres from the highway.”
As soon as we reached the spot with high red painted compound wall with a barbed wire fencing on top of it, Singh wanted to see identity proofs even before letting us in. “No cameras,” he added gruffly.
Why don’t you put up some sign boards on the farmhouse and a banner giving directions on the highway, so that people coming for inspection need not go on Badkhalsa tour, we wonder. “We don’t have such instructions,” Singh replies.
As he opens the ornamental black gates, a typical North Delhi farm house/resort comes into view. Two young German Shepherds are roaming around without leashes. It has a landscaped garden with path lights and lawn, typically hired out for weddings and parties.
There have been no weddings in these lawns since the PACL convoy arrived two months ago. Audis, BMWs and Jaguars are parked across the lawn in no particular order.
A grey Jaguar parked under a tree has turned almost white with bird droppings. Its pair looked faded weathering the elements in the open lawn with Rangerovers and Porsche. The Rolls Royce got a slightly better treatment under a small covered parking lot flanked by a White Lexus and a Black Bentley.
“There are 42 in all,” Singh said. When asked about their condition, he added, “Chal ke aaye sab. (They were driven here).” He reasoned the choice of the place could have been because many of these vehicles came from Punjab. As we sign off the visitors’ register, we realise the Chandigarh family, we met on the way, was that of a mayor of a Haryana city.