The Calcutta High Court has cast a cloak of secrecy over the e-auction process to liquidate plant and machinery of Dunlop India Ltd.

Hearing an appeal filed by one of the unsecured creditors of the closed tyre maker on Tuesday, Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya directed the official liquidator to keep the offers received through the e-auction in a sealed cover for consideration by the court.

The matter will be listed after four weeks. The bench, however, did not stay the e-auction since the process has already commenced.

The order, if not modified or challenged, means that the highest bidder cannot be identified after the close of auction on Friday.

The single bench took note of the wide gap in the valuation of the assets recorded in Dunlop’s last prepared balance sheet of 2015 and the reserve price set for the e-auction by the official liquidator who was appointed by the High Court.

The liquidator had kept the opening bid price of the plant and machinery of Dunlop’s Sahagunj plant in Bengal’s Hooghly district at Rs 13.21 crore. Simultaneously, the opening bid price for plant, machinery and other movable assets of Ambattur plant, near Chennai was fixed at Rs 2 crore.

“It is evident that the value of the properties as of 2015 was in excess of Rs 418 crore. The figures mentioned in the e-auction notice against the reserve price are substantially lower than the values put against the properties in 2015,” Justice Bhattacharya said in her order.

The unsecured creditor had challenged the e-auction on two counts; first, that the reserve price of the plant and machinery in the two factories was grossly under-valued and, second, the e-auction notice was vague.

Justice Bhattacharya rejected the first objection since the Schedule -1, which contains descriptions of the properties, was put up on the website of Railtel Corporation on February 21. Railtel is offering the platform for the e-auction.

The High Court ordered the liquidation of Dunlop on March 31, 2013. In 2016, the Mamata Banerjee government’s attempt to take over Dunlop and Jessop, owned by industrialist Pawan Ruia, by passing two separate bills in the Assembly that did not secure presidential assent.

Workers of the plants have not been paid since 2013 even though the Bengal government pays a sum of Rs 10,000 to the workers of Sahagunj plant every month.