Interest During Loan Moratorium : Live Updates From SC Hearing

Senior Advocate Ravindra Shrivastava now making submissions.

He says that he adopts Senior Advocate Rajiv Dutta’s submissions.

Kumar: Pharma, FMCG, internet companies did very well but industries such as ours did very badly. We are entitled to relief.

Kumar concludes.

Justice Bhushan: No dearth of power with the RBI. No one is denying that.

Kumar: We were totally closed. We are shopping centres. We were asked to pay our employees, we kept on paying them. Footfalls in shopping centres next to zero. 

Kumar highlights provisions of the Disaster Management Act including sections 13, 16 & 18.

He is justifying how statute provides for action to mitigate the effects of a “Disaster”, which in this case, he says, is the ongoing pandemic.

Kumar now taking the bench through the definition of “Disaster” as stipulated under the Disaster Management Act.

“70-80000 cases everyday. Mitigation measures pertinent to reduce the impact of such a disaster”

Sr. Adv. Ranjit Kumar is appearing for Shopping Centres Association.

“Moratorium expired on August 31 so all accounts have been declared NPA ipso facto - this is something that the Court must take note of”

Kumar says that he is reading out statements made by the Governor in order to bring forth the state of the economy.

The statement of the RBI is in May, we are now in September..”The combined impact of demand compression and supply disruption will depress economic activity in the first half of the year. Assuming that economic activity gets restored in a phased manner”

Kumar reads the statement of the RBI Governor

“It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue."

Senior Advocate Ranjit Kumar: I want to start with the RBI Governor's statement where assessment of the Economy has been made.