India’s biggest container gateway, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), and the country’s biggest private port developer, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), are competing for the first time to acquire a port project — the debt laden Dighi Port Ltd — which has been put up for sale under the bankruptcy law.
JNPT and APSEZ have submitted separate resolution plans for Dighi Port Ltd, the entity that runs a greenfield port located on the banks of Rajpuri creek in Maharashtra’s Raigad district.
The third contender
The duo has a third contender to deal with — a consortium of Veritas (India) Ltd, Veritas Infra & Logistic Pvt Ltd and Veritas Polychem Pvt Ltd, which had also filed a resolution plan when the deadline ended on Thursday, according to multiple officials briefed on the bids. They declined to discuss the resolution plans submitted by the three groups.
The bid submitted by Veritas could create a potential conflict of interest because of a lease agreement it had signed with Dighi Port to set up some facilities, they said.
Both JNPT and APSEZ have their own separate strategies to buy Dighi, which owes ₹2,601.73 crore to a clutch of 16 banks led by Bank of India.
Read more on The Hindu BusinessLine.
