Fresh bid boosts NBCC confidence to bag beleaguered Jaypee Infratech

State-run infrastructure firm says will deliver the houses to buyers in 3 years if it wins the bid

State-owned NBCC hopes its revised bid might help it bag beleaguered developer Jaypee Infratech. After the CoC (committee of creditors) meeting on Friday, sources at NBCC said the response to the bid had been positive.

The state-run infrastructure firm offered to give lenders land parcels worth Rs 5,000 crore. “We believe the response has been positive so far. However things would be clear after the next meeting,” said a top NBCC official.

The next CoC meeting is likely to be held on April 30. From monetising assets in stalled projects to giving keys of flats to around 32,000 buyers in three years, NBCC has a plan for Jaypee.

“We will take time to understand commercial part of the project wholly, though we have calculated the numbers on basis of which we have submitted our bids. It is a huge project involving more than 3,000 acres of land covering right from Noida to Agra, there is a hospital as well. If we win this bid we are confident that we can turnaround the company. We have submitted an expression of interest (EOI) for the resolution plan,” Anoop Kumar Mittal, the erstwhile chairman and managing director (CMD), NBCC (India) had recently said.

The public sector enterprise, which is completing some projects of the Amrapali group upon the Supreme Court's direction, had offered lenders land worth Rs 3,000 crore in its earlier resolution plan submitted a couple of months back. It had also offered the Yamuna Expressway, which connects Noida to Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

NBCC and Suraksha Realty group-led consortium, which are in the race to acquire Jaypee Infratech, were asked by the lenders to sweeten their offers. Both have submitted their revised offers under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

According to sources, NBCC has offered to pay Rs 500 crore upfront to lenders and will invest around Rs 2,000-2,500 crore as funding gap to complete delayed housing projects of Jaypee Infratech comprising over 20,000 flats in Noida.

Jaypee Infratech has land parcels of 6,000 acres, of which around 3,500 acres are not utilised. NBCC will give 100 percent equity of Yamuna Expressway to lenders. It was in October last year that Anuj Jain, insolvency resolution professional for this case, began the initiative to revive Jaypee. On the NCLT’s direction, lenders rejected the Rs 7,000-plus crore bid of Suraksha Group.

At the recent meeting of the committee of creditors, homebuyers through their authorised representative had again demanded a forensic audit of Jaypee Infratech's financials.

The work on the Amrapali project has been going on at a slow pace. According to NBCC, the work has been quite negligible as the matter is under consideration in front of Supreme Court. They have started some minor work valued at around Rs 10 crore.