Bank of Baroda calls off Sunny Deol's Juhu villa auction

Mumbai, Aug 21 (PTI) A day after putting out a public notice to auction a villa owned by actor and sitting BJP Member of Parliament Sunny Deol to recover Rs 56 crore dues, Bank of Baroda on Monday said the process is withdrawn due to technical reasons.
     In a public notice on Sunday, the state-owned bank had said it would e-auction 'Sunny Villa' in the Juhu area of the city on September 25.
     But in a similar notice on Monday, Bank of Baroda said the e-auction notice published on August 20 “stands withdrawn due to technical reason”.
     When contacted, the bank did not offer any reason for the withdrawal of the notice.
     The Gurdaspur MP, whose latest movie Gadar 2 is a box office success having already grossed over Rs 300 crore since the release last week, has been in default on a Rs 55.99 crore loan from the bank, interest and penalty, since December 2022.
     As per Sunday's notice, the bank, which has attached the property, had fixed the reserve price for the auction at Rs 51.43 crore and an earnest money deposit of Rs 5.14 crore.
     Apart from Sunny Villa, the 599.44 square metre property also houses Sunny Sounds, which is owned by the Deols, and is the corporate guarantor to the loan, while Sunny's actor-politician father Dharmendra is the personal guarantor of the debt, according to the auction notice.
     The notice had further said the Deols had the option of clearing the dues of the bank to prevent the auction, under the provisions of the Sarfaesi Act 2002.
     Sunny Deol has been representing BJP from the Gurdaspur seat of Punjab since 2019, when he won the seat with a landslide margin defeating the then Congress member Sunil Jhakar. The seat for long was represented by another actor Vinod Khanna for the Congress.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)