New Delhi: The Adani Group has acquired Blue Star Realtors, a subsidiary of Housing Development Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL), which holds absolute ownership of 70 acres of land at Kalamassery in Kochi, where HDIL had announced it’s much hyped Rs 4,000 crore Cyber City Project, that got mired in a series of controversies.
Sources in the Ministry of Company Affairs and RoC details have confirmed this development.
A query emailed to Adani Corporate office didn’t elicit any response at the time of going to print
The deal size is not yet known. But as per market analysts, per acre land in this area will easily fetch anything between Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore. The land parcel has Special Economic Zone status and it is very close to the Seaport-Airport Road. No such large land parcels are available in Kochi or anywhere in Kerala for industrial purposes, they said.
However, it’s unlikely that HDIL, in a distress sale mode, would have earned any premium for it, they added.
People close to the development said, “It was a cool and quiet deal for Adani, and it gave some respite for HDIL, which has been playing a risky game in the realty sector, and lately started exploring ways to get itself out of the abyss.’’
Following the acquisition, the board of Blue Star Realtors has been disbanded and replaced with new directors including Gudena Jagannadha Rao, Deepak Krishna Gopal Maheshwari, Yogesh Dalal and Rajesh Jha (all hardcore Adani guys). These appointments took place between April and July this year.
Meanwhile HDIL website seems currently defunct. If you visit it would say: Thank you for visiting our website. We are currently in the process of revising our website in consonance with the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016.
It was in June 2013, the scam-hit HDIL, promoted by Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan had put the land for sale. The 70 acre land parcel owned by Central PSU Hindustan Machine Tools was bought by Blue Star Realtors in October 2006 for a disclosed price of Rs 91 crore to set up a mega Cyber City project in Kochi.
The sale then hit a huge roadblock in the state after four PILs were filed by human rights activists demanding a CBI probe into the undervalued deal. The petitioners had said the land could fetch Rs 700 crore as per market value. HMT Employees’ Union (CITU) too moved the court protesting the deal.
The high decibel controversy around HMT land sale kept the then Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan away from the inauguration ceremony of HDIL Cyber City project in February 2011.
The project that was designed to be completed in three phases — with amenities like hospital, training school, shopping complex, multiplex and Office spaces for IT firms — was meant create over 60,000 direct jobs.
Although layers of controversy erupted around the HMT and HDIL deal, the deal was subsequently upheld by the Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court. This is not the first time that Adani Group bought an HDIL property. In January 2013, the realty arm of the group, Adani Enterprises, had took over two acres of land near Andheri Suburb for a price of Rs 900 crore.
