Does Express Towers deal have a Pawar link?

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule has increased her stake in Pune-based Panchshil Realty’ssubsidiary to 9.09 percent, a report in The Economic Times said today.

Panchshil Realty was recently reported to have evinced interest in buying Mumbai’s iconic Express Towers along with US private equity firm Blackstone for Rs 900 crore.

Supriya Sule, aMember of Parliament,and her husband Sadanand Sule had around 4 percent stake in the Panchshil Tech Park. However,The Economic Times report said as per the company’s latest filing, Supriya Sule has more than doubled her stake while Sadanand Sule is not listed as a shareholder at all.

[caption id=“attachment_1237495” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Deal sealed[/caption]

Ironically,Panchshil Realty’s promoter, Atul Chordia, has a history of close business relationship with Shahid Balwa’s DB Realty group as well as Sharad Pawar and in barely 15 years has created a massive real estate empire through their Panchshil Realty group in Pune.Following Balwa’s arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the 2G spectrum scam in 2011, Maharashtra’s leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Eknath Khadse, had alleged a nexus between Pawar and Balwa.

Firstpost had reported earlier t hat records with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) showed that in 2010, DB Realty’s Eon Aviation Pvt Ltd shared the same address (31/A, ground floor, Dr. Gopalrao Deshmukh Marg, Pedder Road, Mumbai) with Panchshil Hotels Pvt. Ltd ( it is part of the Panchshil Realty Group) and other sister concerns such as EON Kharadi Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd and EON Hadapsar Infrastructure Pvt Ltd. RoC records showed that in Pune, the Eon Aviation office stood located in the Panchshil Tech Park One complex which shared the controversial survey no. 191(A) at Yerawada with DB Realty’s five-star hotel project. This project now stands stalled presenting an ugly sight.

In April 2011, the Panchshil Group acknowledged in the media that Pawar’s daughter and NCP leader Supriya Sule and her husband Sadanand held 4 percent shares in the Panchshil Tech Park One project.

Investigations undertaken by Abhav Vaidya in May 2011 revealed a deeper connection between DB Realty’s Eon Aviation Pvt and the Panchshil Realty group, in which Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule and son-in-law Sadanand held minority stakes.

DB Realty’s February 5, 2010, prospectus for its public offer listed Panchshil’s promoter Atul Chordia and his brother Sagar with 5,000 shares each in Eon Aviation. The same document also listed Atul and Sagar Chordia as directors of Eon Aviation, as of December 2009.

The Pune-based EON Hadapsar Infrastructure Private Limited, of which Atul Chordia is a director, held 9.90lakh shares (7.07%) in Eon Aviation Private Ltd, said the IPO prospectus, Vaidya reported back then.

So the presence of Eon Aviation’s office in the Panchshil Tech Park One premises in Pune clearly pointed to a business association between Supriya Sule’s firm and the DB Realty group firm.

The Chordias were originally sugar traders from Pune and the deep Chordia-Pawar friendship dates back to Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar’s college days. Pawar was then a classmate of Panchshil Realty promoter Atul Chordia’s father, Ishwardas Chordia when they were students at Pune’s Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC).

Having entered Pune’s real estate market in the mid-1990s, the Chordias achieved dazzling growth and their Panchshil Realty Group is now ranked as one of Pune’s real estate giants with numerous prestigious projects in its name.

In 2002, Panchshil Realty undertook construction of the International Convention Centre on Pune’s Senapati Bapat road. This project was initiated when Sharad Pawar’s brother Prataprao Pawar was president of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA).

Panchshil Reality was floated as a real estate and project management consultancy company in 1996. The company has to its name eight residential projects in posh localities, six IT parks, three corporate parks, the EON IT Park under the special economic zone (SEZ) in Kharadi, three five-star hotels and three retail projects.

The posh Satellite Towers on Mudhwa Road (Koregaon Park extension) was the first luxurious residential project that brought Panchshil Reality into the limelight. Panchshil Hotel and Panchshil Club in Pimpri- Chinchwad were some of the earliest projects of the group.

On Monday, The Economic Times reported thatBlackstone Group and its portfolio company Panchshil Realty are set to buy Express Towers for Rs 900 crore. Blackstone and Panchshil are buying 384,000 sq. ft of the total leasable area of nearly 400,000 sq. ft. The deal excludes a top-floor penthouse owned by the former wife of Indian Express chairman and managing director Vivek Goenka, restaurants owned by members of the Goenka family and Express Group offices.