Canara Bank drags GTL group to NCLT on default of over Rs 10 billion

State-run Canara Bank has moved taken telecom infrastructure player GTL group to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) after the company defaulted on its debt repayment.

While GTL has defaulted on Rs 4.59 billion loans from the bank, GTL Infrastructure owes Rs 5.41 billion to the lender.

"Canara Bank has filed an application for initiation of corporate insolvency resolution process against GTL and GTL Infrastructure," the companies said in separate filings to exchanges.

GTL, however, claimed that it is a victim of consolidation in the telecom sector. The last of such circumstances occurred in the last 12 months which saw the unprecedented shut down of three major operators --Aircel, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications--as well as the forced consolidation of Vodafone and Idea and Telenor and Bharti Airtel," GTL said in the statement.

These events, which have been entirely beyond the control of the management, have had a material and adverse impact on the operations and prospects of the company, the company said.

As of March 2018, GTL had debt of Rs 65.02 billion while that of GTL Infrastructure had Rs 49.56 billion.

GTL shares were trading down around 2 per cent at Rs 5.79 on the BSE at 1300 hrs, while GTL Infra was trading down at 5 per cent at Rs 1.35.