Bharti Airtel has withdrawn its bid to purchase assets of Reliance Communications Ltd (R-Com) after terming the decision of the committee of creditors to extend the deadline for the submission of offers at the request of Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio as “extremely unfair” and “biased”.

The committee of creditors (CoC) extended the deadline by 10 days and has now decided to open the bids on November 25.

Without naming Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel director (finance) Harjeet Kohli said in a letter to resolution professional Anish Niranjan Nanavaty that when his company had asked for an extension of the deadline till December 1, it was turned down by the committee of creditors of R-Com.

“Given the complexities involved in the proposed transaction, vide our letter dated October 31, 2019, we requested for an extension of time to submit the resolution plan from November 11, 2019, till December 1, 2019... Disappointingly, our request for extension was rejected by the CoC,” Kohli said.

Later, Reliance Jio sought an extension of the asset sale deal deadline by 10 days.

“To our utter shock, we have learnt that the CoC has now decided to extend the submission timeline to November 25, 2019, until 1200 hours, solely based on the request of another potential bidder,” Kohli said.

Bharti Airtel, Bharti Infratel and private equity firm Varde Partners have already submitted their bids for the assets of R-Com.

Airtel has placed a conditional bid to buy the spectrum of R-Com, while Bharti Infratel has submitted bids for mobile towers.

He said that as Bharti Airtel’s request was formally declined by the CoC, the company was constrained to submit the bids in haste without the benefit of sufficient time to complete the resolution plan within the set deadline.

“We find this conduct, inequitable, questionable and against the spirit of what should be a highly transparent process. To say the least, it is extremely unfair and rather biased...we, hereby, formally withdraw our resolution plans while reserving all rights, including the right to submit our resolution plan afresh within the new deadline communicated now,” Kohli said.

Last year, R-Com had signed a deal with Reliance Jio to sell 122.4MHz of spectrum and 43,000 telecom towers. But the deal fell through at the start of this year because the department of telecom (DoT) refused to grant a letter of comfort to Jio, absolving it of the obligation for past spectrum dues of R-Com.

Soon after, insolvency proceedings were started against R-Com on the basis of a case filed by filed by Swedish telecom gear maker Ericsson after the company failed to clear its dues.

On Saturday, R-Com chairman Anil Ambani tendered his resignation after the company posted a consolidated loss of Rs 30,142 crore for July-September 2019 because of provisioning for liabilities after the Supreme Court ruling on statutory dues. This is the second-highest loss posted by any Indian corporate after Vodafone reported a second-quarter loss of Rs 50,921 crore.

R-Com had made a provision of Rs 28,314 crore to cover its liability for licence fee and spectrum dues in its second-quarter results. This includes licence fees of Rs 23,327 crore and spectrum usage charges of Rs 4,987 crore.