The Income-Tax Department carried out searches on the premises of Pipavav Shipyard in Mumbai and Gujarat

A visit to Pipavav Shipyard office, SKIL House, here confirmed the happenings.

Calls to Mr Nikhil Gandhi, Chairman, Pipavav Shipyard, and Mr Bhavish Gandhi, Vice-Chairman, went unanswered.

The Nikhil Gandhi-promoted company was recently in the news in September for bagging a joint venture deal from public sector undertaking Mazagon Dock.

Deal with Mazagaon dock

In March, Mazagon Dock issued an expression of interest seeking to form a strategic partnership with Indian private sector shipyards to meet the challenging timelines for liquidating its order book of over Rs 1 lakh crore

However, three bidders who had been shortlisted by the Mazagon – L&T, Bharati and ABG shipyards – cried foul stating that there was no transparency in evaluation process nor was the selection criteria spelt out to them.

Each of them wrote to Mazagon Dock and the Ministry of Defence expressing their disappointment over the way the selection was done.

On September 26, the Defence Minister, Mr A.K. Antony, announced that his Ministry had decided to put on hold the Mazagon-Pipavav deal till a policy on joint venture was put in place by the Government.

Mr Antony said the Ministry would also study the complaints received from some private shipyards regarding the joint venture. The issue needs to be fully examined and settled before any forward movement takes place on this front. The joint ventures must compete for contracts and should not get them on nomination basis, he said.

Meanwhile, the Pipavav scrip on BSE, which lost four per cent intraday on reports of the I-T searches, recovered to close 0.95 lower at Rs 83.15 on Wednesday. Some marketmen said the searches could be in connection with insider trading allegations against the promoters.

Related Topics