Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher House to go under the hammer today

The SBI-led 17 banks’ consortium is going to auction the Kingfisher House in Mumbai on Thursday. The 2,001.70 sq. ft. property will go under the hammer in a bid to recover a part of the nearly Rs 9,000 crore debt now due from Kingfisher Airlines and Vijay Mallya.

The e-auction will be carried out under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interet (SARFASI) Act, 2002.

The reserve price of the property has been kept at Rs 150 crore, with the bid increment amount at Rs 5 lakh and the deposit has been fixed at Rs 15 lakh.

The lenders’ consortium had taken over the Kingfisher House near the Mumbai airport in February 2015 after winning a case with a local court. They have also taken over the Kingfisher Villa in Goa which is worth about Rs 90 crore.

So far, the banks have recovered about Rs 1,600 crore as against their exposure of nearly Rs 9,000 crore.

SBI as the highest exposure to the debt — nearly Rs 1,600 crore.

Vijay Mallya, who has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate to be present for a hearing on March 18, left India on March 2 even as the consortium was trying to get an order stopping him from leaving the country and getting a freeze on his passport. While his location hasn’t been revealed, it is believed that Mallya is in London. The businessman has often taken to Twitter since to say that he didn’t deem the time was right or him to return to the country and even attacking the media for playing up the issue in a bid for TRPs.