Mallya’s options limited after an arrest warrant issued by the court

With ED (Enforcement Directorate) strongly hoping to get back Vijay Mallya in India within 15 to 20 days, options left with Vijay Mallya seems to be trimming day by day as he even continues to not appear before the Indian courts.  With approximately Rs.9000 crores of loan amounts yet to be re-paid by Vijay Mallya, the lenders, all of whom are government run banks, will be praying that the defaulter turns up in India thus improving chances of recovering the dues from him.

ED has alleged that Mallya had siphoned a sizeable portion of loans given by IDBI Bank to purchase properties abroad. Mallya’s United Breweries has vehemently denied such charges and expressed their shock at such maligning allegations. ED will be handing over the arrest warrant to the Ministry of External Affairs thus increasing chances of getting the poster-boy of NPA mess back in India.  Only last week, Mallya’s diplomatic passport was cancelled by the GOI. It is to be noted here, Mallya is a member of Rajya Sabha.

The court has already rejected KFA’s plea challenging the ED claim. Now KFA will have to appeal to High Court and challenge the warrant of arrest issued against Vijay Mallya by the special court handling money-laundering cases. There is a growing sentiment that Vijay Mallya should come clean on his loans and appear before courts and face the lenders. However with the arrest warrant issued by the court and the passport cancelled by GOI, it will be interesting to see if he returns to India at all. Meanwhile his earlier request for one-time settlement of his dues by paying Rs 4000 crore to the banks was rejected by the consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India.