The company said that, at a hearing before the Appellate Authority for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction on May 18, the bench accepted the company's proposal to submit the revival plan to BIFR. It also directed the BIFR to consider the proposal without conditionalities and decide on the priority of disbursement of sale proceeds based on merit.

The company slipped into the red during the nine-month accounting period to December 31, 1997, and posted a net loss of Rs 231.84 crore against a net profit of Rs 5.14 crore in the previous year.

Since its net worth was entirely wiped out after the reversal of a Rs 169.26 crore land deal of 1995-96, the BIFR registered Dunlop under Section 17(3) of SICA instead of Section 17(2), which the company would have preferred. This was done onJune 22, 1998.

After a series of appeals and hearings before the AAIFR, the bench has now directed the BIFR to consider the company's proposal under Section 17(2) of SICA, which if admitted will have no operating agency supervising the preparation of the revival package.

The company's earlier revival proposal to the BIFR had pivoted around the sale of its non-performing assets which included buildings, sacrifices from employees and state governments. It had also sought funds from financial institutions to fund its proposed voluntary retirement scheme.

Dunlop's latest revival scheme is without any conditionalities, according to the release. It says that the scheme proposes to generate funds from the sale proceeds of its nonm-performing assets, as well as the promoter's contribution towards a rights issue or through injecting fresh equity.

In fact, the company had proposed a 1:1 rights issue at a premium of Rs 15 each which was expected to mop up around Rs 45 crore. The UK-based promoters Dunlop Rim &Wheel Corp Ltd, which holds 39.82 per cent in Dunlop, has offered to pick up any unsubscribed portion of the rights issue.

The release said that the company had filed an appeal before the AAIFR for modification of their March 12, 1999, order. Dunlop had submitted affidavits saying that the some of the statements attributed to their counsel and recorded in the order were not made by him.

It says that AAIFR has modified the order and has noted that BIFR will take a decision on how the sale proceeds of properties were to be utilised. Due to this, the release says that "...it is no longer a stipulation to provide for upfront payment of statutory liabilities and dues to banks and workers out of the sale proceeds and the sale proceeds can be well utilised for restarting the operations in the factories".

On February 7 and 8, 1998, Dunlop management declared temporary suspension of work at the Sahagunj unit in West Bengal at Ambattur in Tamil Nadu. The 7,500-odd workers in these two units have not received anysalary for over a year now.