The Dalmia Bharat Group firm Rajputana Properties (RPPL) on Thursday challenged in the Supreme Court the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal’s order, which on Wednesday approved UltraTech Cement’s bid for bankrupt Binani Cement.
A bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi admitted the plea and agreed to give it an early hearing and listed the case for November 19.
Advocate Gopal Shankaranarayan, appearing for RPPL, told the apex court that they need an urgent hearing as certain steps may be taken after the appellate tribunal gave the approval to UltraTech Cement’s offer.
It said that UltraTech was ineligible to submit a resolution plan under Section 29A of the IBC and added that its (RPPL) offer was rejected despite the same having been approved by the committee of creditors with an overwhelming majority of 99.43%. Instead of accepting its approved bid, the NCLAT has approved the offer of UltraTech, an unsuccessful bidder, it added.
RPPL further alleged that UltraTech colluded with the promoters of Binani Cement who are defaulters and have been dragged to NCLT by the lenders.

“UltraTech has illegally and improperly revised and improved beyond the stipulated timeline by sending a mere email, improving the financial terms of the plan, after becoming aware of the financial terms of RPPL’s resolution plan in a manner which is contrary to the express provisions of the process document read with its clarifications formulated by the CoC and intend of the IBC,” RPPL said in its appeal.
On Wednesday NCLAT approved the revised bid of UltraTech which has offered to pay Rs 7,960 crore under its plan wherein all the financial as well as the operational creditors will receive their complete dues. The appellate tribunal, while approving UltraTech’s bid, said that the plan submitted by rival RPPL was discriminatory against some financial creditors.

In its 44-page order, the appellate tribunal noted that the RPPL’s resolution plan discriminated between some of the financial creditors who are equally situated and not balanced the other stakeholder, such as operational creditors. “Therefore the adjudicating authority (NCLT Kolkata bench) has rightly held the resolution plan submitted by RRPL to be discriminatory,” it noted.
It said that the committee of creditors had erred initially by endorsing RPPL’s plan and rejecting UltraTech’s plan on the ground that it was submitted late. The NCLAT said that both — RPPL and UltraTech — had submitted their plan on February 12, 2018 and subsequently RPPL had revised its plan on March 7 and UltraTech on March 8, much before the CoC voting date of March 14. However, while the CoC accepted the revised offer of RPPL, it did not do so in case of UltraTech.