Bank of Maharashtra to auction assets of Videocon Group's Unity Appliances

State-owned Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) has put on sale movable and immovable properties of Unity Appliances, a unit of debt-ridden Videocon Group, to recover Rs 153.77 crore loan. The outstanding dues of the Unity Appliances Ltd are over Rs 153.77 crore, plus interest, from January 5, 2018. The company situated at SIPCOT Industrial Complex Sivagangai Tamil Nadu manufactures air conditioners and LE and LCD Television.

Videocon Industries and its promoter Venugopal Dhoot and P N Dhoot are guarantors to Unity Appliances, as per the public notice put out by BoM.

The electronic auction for land and machinery is slated for March 30, 2019, with a reserve price of Rs 42.34 crore for land and Rs 72.82 crore for plant and machinery.

This is the second time the bank has issued e-auction notice for Unity Appliance Ltd. Earlier, a notice was issued under Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Securities Interest Act, 2002 in January last year.

The Videocon group is among 28 large defaulters identified by the Reserve Bank of India in the second list for undertaking insolvency and bankruptcy process.

In June 2017, RBI's internal advisory committee (IAC) identified 12 accounts, each having more than Rs 5,000 crore of outstanding loans and accounting for 25 per cent of total NPAs of banks.

Following the RBI advisory, banks referred Bhushan Steel Ltd, Bhushan Power & Steel Ltd, Essar Steel Ltd, Jaypee Infratech Ltd, Lanco Infratech Ltd, Monnet Ispat & Energy Ltd, Jyoti Structures Ltd, Electrosteel Steels Ltd, Amtek Auto Ltd, Era Infra Engineering Ltd, Alok Industries Ltd and ABG Shipyard Ltd to NCLT. These accounts together have a total outstanding loan of Rs 1.75 lakh crore.