Hallmark Emerald project heads to auction a tenth time; liquidator raises reserve price to Rs 70 cr
The liquidator of Hallmark Living Space Private Limited has put the company’s abandoned “Emerald” township on the GST Road at Chengalpattu back up for sale at a reserve price of ₹70.50 crore, in what public records suggest is at least the tenth attempt to find a buyer for the asset since 2022.
The sale notice, published on 18 September in English, Tamil and Hindi dailies, invites bids under Regulation 32 of the IBBI (Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2016, pursuant to an order of the National Company Law Tribunal’s Chennai Bench dated 13 August 2026. Liquidator S. Dhanapal (IBBI/IPA-002/IP-N00060/2017-18/10112) was appointed to the company by the same bench on 17 August 2018.
The e-auction is scheduled for 15 October 2026 between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on BAANKNET, the PSB Alliance platform that IBBI has designated for liquidation sales. Earnest money of ₹7 crore must be deposited by 12 October at 6 p.m., and bidding will move in increments of ₹25 lakh. Site inspection is open until 12 October, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. GST and other levies are extra.
The asset
On offer is a proposed built-up area of 8,98,137 sq ft — described in the notice as “not fully built-up” — sitting on 7.62 acres at Chettipunniyam, opposite Mahindra World City and next to the Chengalpattu RTO office. An undivided share of 6,388 sq ft is carved out of the sale; IBBI’s earlier auction listings record that this UDS was already conveyed through registered sale deeds to home buyers by the ex-promoters of the corporate debtor.
The property is being sold on an “as is where is, as is what is, whatever there is and without any recourse” basis. The liquidator’s own process document from an earlier round notes that the site is within walking distance of Paranur railway station and that construction was executed by Larsen & Toubro.
How it got here
Hallmark Living Space was incorporated in February 2012 with an authorised capital of ₹35 crore and paid-up capital of just ₹10 lakh. Commercial operations were discontinued on 1 April 2015, and corporate insolvency resolution proceedings commenced by NCLT order with effect from 26 September 2017. The trigger was unusual for a real estate failure: L&T, the contractor on the project, filed the Section 9 application as an operational creditor.
Resolution failed, and the tribunal ordered liquidation within eleven months, via order MA/303/2018 dated 17 August 2018 in CP No. 577/IB/CB/2017. The liquidation has now run more than eight years against the one-year outer limit contemplated by Regulation 44.
The stakeholder list filed in March 2021 shows Bank of India among the secured financial creditors. On the unsecured side, three Hallmark group entities had claims admitted — Hallmark Infrastructure (₹11.73 crore), Hallmark Infocity (₹3.53 crore) and Hallmark Capital (₹11.13 lakh) — each recorded as subject to objections raised in a February 2018 legal notice issued by King and Partridge on behalf of Madison India Real Estate Fund.
Price trajectory
Reserve prices disclosed in IBBI’s liquidation auction-notice database trace a steady markdown through 2022-25, followed by a reversal this year:
| Auction date | Reserve price |
| 07 Dec 2022 | ₹90.00 cr |
| 27 Mar 2023 | ₹85.00 cr |
| 05 Jul 2023 | ₹85.00 cr |
| 18 Aug 2023 | ₹83.00 cr |
| 09 May 2024 | ₹75.00 cr |
| 27 Feb 2025 | ₹70.00 cr |
| 28 Mar 2025 | ₹70.00 cr |
| 28 Jul 2025 | ₹65.00 cr |
| 15 Oct 2026 | ₹70.50 cr |
(Sources: IBBI liquidation auction notices, dated 14.11.2022, 10.03.2023, 09.06.2023, 21.07.2023, 13.04.2024, 05.02.2025, 05.03.2025, 30.06.2025; current notice as published 18.09.2026. A further round was run on 29.01.2022 per the liquidator’s process document; rounds between 2018 and 2021, if any, were not retrieved.)
Derived from the above — my calculations, not the notice:
- The current reserve works out to roughly ₹9.25 crore an acre, or about ₹785 per sq ft of proposed built-up area.
- ₹70.50 crore is 21.7% below the ₹90 crore sought in December 2022.
- It is 8.5% above the ₹65 crore reserve at the last recorded round in July 2025.
- EMD at ₹7 crore is 9.93% of the reserve — marginally under the 10% convention.
- The ₹25 lakh bid increment is 0.35% of the reserve, unusually fine for an asset of this size.
The upward revision is the live question in this round. Schedule I to the Liquidation Process Regulations permits a liquidator to reduce the reserve price by up to 25% where an auction fails; it does not contemplate routine increases. An increase after a failed sale points to either a fresh valuation exercise or a specific direction in the 13 August 2026 NCLT order — which is not reproduced in the public notice.
Bidders must furnish an undertaking that they do not suffer ineligibility under Section 29A to the extent applicable, and the notice warns that EMD will be forfeited if ineligibility is established at any stage. Full terms are in the E-Auction Process Information Document on the corporate debtor’s website and on BAANKNET.
Discover more from Insolvency Tracker
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
