The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Future Retail Limited to approach the Delhi high court with its plea to continue the proceedings before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on its Rs 24,713-crore deal with the Reliance group that is under challenge from Amazon.

The top court passed the order while dealing with a plea by Future Retail to finalise the amalgamation deal with Reliance Retail.

FRL said if the deal failed to take off, it would eventually result in job losses to over 22,000 persons.

The submissions were earlier made before the bench by senior advocate Harish Salve for FRL who argued that since the finalisation of the amalgamation process would take six -eight months, FRL be granted permission to proceed with the deal, pending disposal of the batch of petitions.

Salve argued that no prejudice would be caused to Amazon on account of the deal which in any case would be subject to the final outcome of the batch of petitions in the apex court.

FRL had also pleaded that it is incurring expenditure every day and there is an imminent threat of insolvency.

Any delay in the proceedings before the NCLT will have serious ramifications and virtually render the agreement between FRL­-Reliance group redundant.

The CCI and the Sebi had earlier approved the scheme following which FRL had filed an application for sanction of the composite scheme under the provisions of Section 230 to 232 of the Companies Act, 2013 before the NCLT for its consideration.