Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

On Thursday, the Supreme Court stayed the sale of assets of Anil Ambani’s RCom which were consolidated to Reliance Jio Infocomm of Mukesh Ambani in view of who should be refunded first from the money that has been raised from the deal out of banks who have lent money to RCom or Ericsson. A bench of Justices A K Goel, RF Nariman, and UU Lalit along with creditor banks agreed to hear the plea filed by SBI. A tribunal’s order was challenged by the SBI which was upheld by Bombay high court thereby allowing Ericsson to claim on the consolidated assets of RCom. RCom owes a sum of Rs. 42,000 Crore to the Indian lenders. SBI also argued that its claim took precedence over others as a secured lender.

Anil Ambani’s led group’s Reliance Communications, Reliance Telecom, and Reliance Infratel are incorporated in RCom Consolidated. 24 other lenders apart from SBI comprise the Joint Lenders Forum. For RCom Consolidated’s Assets, a sale through bidding was initiated. Reliance Jio had agreed to buy the spectrum, other infrastructure and, cell towers including the 1.78 Lakh km of fiber optics line for Rs. 17,300 Crore. Apart from the monetization of secured assets, two other properties of RCom consolidated in Delhi and Chennai were proposed to be sold to the third parties for Rs. 800 Crore.

After the bid for Jio was finalized, Ericsson moved the tribunal and sought to restrain the sale of RCom Consolidated assets on the ground which had a claim of Rs. 1,150 Crore on the private telecom firm which was debt-ridden. On 5th March, the tribunal gave an order in the favor of Ericsson and on 8th March, the High Court dismissed the appeal of RCom against it.

By saumya