The Delhi high court on Tuesday dismissed an application filed by Budget airline SpiceJet seeking an extension to deposit the first ₹ 50-crore instalment towards the ₹ 144.5 crore owed to Kalanithi Maran and KAL Airways Pvt. Ltd. in their long-running legal dispute and extend the timeline for depositing the subsequent tranche of ₹ 94.15 crore by 45 days.
A bench of justice Vinod Kumar noted that following high court’s March 18 order asking SpiceJet and its promoter to pay ₹ 144 crore, the airline on July 13 had undertaken to deposit ₹ 50 crore within 45 days, making August 27 the deadline for the first instalment and the remaining ₹ 95 crore within 90 days. However, even ₹ 50 crore had not been deposited. “This could court have taken a lenient view in respect of the time limit of second installment, had the petitioner complied with their own undertaking to deposit ₹ 50 crore with the Registrar General in 45 days. The judge further rejected SpiceJet’s plea to submit a property title deed instead of depositing ₹ 144 crore. “So far as submitting the original document of property in Gurgaon is concerned, such a request has already been rejected by this court by order dated March 18. Though the property is now unencumbered, this Court is more concerned with the petitioner’s own undertaking of depositing ₹ 50 crores within 45 days. Had the petitioner deposited ₹ 50 crores this Court could have entertained the plea of depositing the document of property in Gurgaon as security for permitting the amount of ₹ 94 crores. However, as the petitioner has not deposited ₹ 50 crores as per his undertaking, I am not inclined to accept the property as security.
The bench said it could not grant repeated extensions. Even this part of undertaking has not been complied with,” the bench said. Application dismissed,” the court said.
Because he had neither received his share of the money nor the convertible warrants or preference shares, although Maran was made liable to receive 18 crore warrants, which translated to a 26% shareholding in SpiceJet, he approached the Delhi high court.
