The Metal Box Workers Union (MBWU) has expressed dismay at the report that S R Batliboi & Co has fixed the value of Metal Box India's (MBIL) Worli property at Rs 43 crore for commercial use and Rs 36 crore for industrial purposes, Aloke Mukherjee, general secretary, MBWU said. The Batliboi report, however, is yet to be tabled officially. The HDFC report too is yet to be placed.
The Union is worried that the scaling down of the property's worth, which forms a major chunk of the Rs 139.82 crore Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) rehab package, is likely to upset all calculations. "Even the anticipated receipts of Rs 91.54 crore as per earlier valuations was on the lower side," Mukherjee said.
S R Batliboi & Co was shortlisted along with Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) by MBIL operating agency, ICICI, to assess the value of the company's Worli property. The Delhi High Court had directed ICICI to submit the valuation report before the March 17, 1998 court hearing at Delhi. The valuation of the Worli property, spread across 14,638.91 sq mts, was fixed at Rs 91.54 crore for commercial use and Rs 73.05 crore for industrial use by the Income Tax department report dated February 23, 1996.
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The Appellate Authority for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (AAIFR) had re-assessed the property's value to Rs 96 crore in March last year.
Meanwhile, in a related development, AAIFR, which had postponed the date of hearing an appeal on March 16, 1998, to March 27, has in an order once again -- to the surprise of Metal Box unions -- preponed the date of hearing to March 11, 1998.
The AAFIR order stated "...the date was inadvertently typed as 27-3-98 in the order....... the appeal stands pre-poned to 11-3-98." MBWU, which received the AAIFR note on Monday, was taken aback by the order which allowed very little time to Union representatives to make it for the hearing in Delhi.
MBWU has approached the West Bengal government to use its office to have the date of the hearing changed.
It may be recalled that MBWU in a letter to the AAIFR had expressed surprise on its earlier decision to fix the date for hearing on March 16 since a case pending in the Delhi High Court is scheduled for a hearing on March 17, 1998.
The Union had in a letter requested the AAFIR to use its discretion to fix the date after the court hearing. "The last AAIFR report took us by surprise and the latest one has shocked us all," MBWU representatives told Business Standard.