SAT disposes of Sahara appeal

The Securities Appellate Tribunal today disposed of an appeal by Sahara group entities, including its chief Subrata Roy, saying that the matter is pending before the Supreme Court.
The appeal related to the case involving two Sahara group firms raising money without regulatory approvals. The legal battle with market regulator Sebi is continuing in the Supreme Court over the refund of over Rs 20,000 crore to investors.
Sahara Housing and Investment Corp Ltd and Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd, its directors and Roy had filed the appeal with SAT against Sebi's order.
The Supreme Court on July 17, 2013 had said that no High Court, SAT and any other forum would pass any orders against the orders passed by Sebi in implementation of this court's judgement of refunding money to investors.

"In these circumstances, without going into merits, we dispose of the appeal as not maintainable in view of Apex Court's order dated July 17, 2013, with liberty to the appellants to move this tribunal, if any clarificationary order is passed by Apex Court," the tribunal said.
"...In our opinion, it would be wholly improper on our part to entertain such arguments as it would amount to contravening Apex Court's order dated July 17, 2013," it added.
According to SAT, an application has been moved by appellants before the apex court seeking appropriate order and the same is pending cannot be a ground to entertain the present appeal.

In August 2012, Supreme Court had directed the Sahara group firms to refund money raised from investors through optionally fully convertible debentures.