Atul Punj-promoted, Punj Lloyd, was upheld by a dedicated bankruptcy court for liquidation after its lenders rejected the revival plan submitted by a consortium of Prudent ARC and Payard Investments.

The company has admitted liability of over Rs 13,380 crore. The court approves Ashwini Mehra, the company's resolution professional (RP), as the liquidator for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) directed the liquidator to submit the primary report within 75 days from the liquidation commencement date. The voting percentage for the resolution plan was 8.06%, against 79.53%, and abstaining from voting on the resolution was 12.41%. However, the plan failed.

ICICI Bank had approached the tribunal to admit the company under the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) after the company defaulted on over Rs 800 crore.

While admitting the company for liquidation, the RP of the company also sought the tribunal's directions for liquidating because there were several ongoing EPC projects with around 3,000 employees on its roll within the company.

The RP had first invited bids from potential buyers, and about 13 potential bidders had expressed interest in acquiring the company through the resolution process. A consortium of Payard Investments and Prudent ARC submitted the final resolution plan.

Associate partner at Dhir & Dhir Associates, Ashish Pyasi, said that the assets, which an EPC company will have, generally would mean its ongoing projects. Till the company reaches the stage when it must be sold as a going concern, most of the projects are either gone or over.

Pyasi said that with so many cases of EPC companies which have gone into liquidation, finding a resolution applicant or buyer for an EPC company is difficult. In liquidation, challenges are multi-fold. The benefit of this is that buyers do not have to go through the process of plan approval.

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