Metals and mining baron Anil Agarwal’s attempt to take Vedanta Ltd private has suffered a major jolt as the de-listing offer has failed. The total number of shares tendered in the offer was less than the threshold required to make it successful.

Vedanta will now return all the equity shares that were tendered during the delisting process to the shareholders.

The failure of the delisting attempt came amid a rollercoaster ride for Agarwal with the reverse book-building process getting off to a slow start. Agarwal had told a news channel early on Friday he may come out with a counter offer if the delisting plan struggles to overcome the 90 per cent hump that is mandatory for it to become successful.

Hopes rose later in the day with stock exchanges data showing that shareholders had tendered more than the minimum amount required.

However, reports of glitches as some investors could not put in their bids saw the offer getting extended to 7 pm on Friday. But because of unconfirmed bids of a little over 12.54 crore shares, Vedanta fell short of the mark.

While the promoter group needed around 134.1 crore shares to delist the company, they could only muster 125.47 crore bids.

In a regulatory filing on Saturday, Vedanta said the total number of shares validly tendered by the public shareholders was 1,25,47,16,610.

“Thus, the delisting offer is deemed to have failed in terms of Regulation 19(1) of the delisting regulations. The acquirers will not acquire any equity shares tendered by the public shareholders in the delisting offer and the equity shares will continue to remain listed on the stock exchanges. The company’s American Depositary Shares will continue to remain listed on the NYSE,” Vedanta said.

No final application will be made to the stock exchanges for delisting, it added.