New Delhi, Jun 12 (PTI) The Supreme Court Friday directed that an amount of Rs 25 lakh, deposited in the apex court registry by an advocate who had offered the money for travel of migrant workers from Mumbai to their native places in Uttar Pradesh amid Covid-19 pandemic, be disbursed to family members of five workers who had died during their journey back to their home.

A bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan noted in its order that petitioner (advocate) has said in his application that the amount deposited by him in the registry should be disbursed as compensation to those migrants, who had died while taking journey from different places to reach their home town.

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The bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and M R Shah, noted that five names of deceased migrant workers who had died during their journey have been given in the application and the petitioner has urged that the amount be disbursed to their families members.

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The counsel appearing for petitioner Sagheer Ahmed Khan told the bench that they would furnish the addresses of family members of these deceased within two weeks.

"After the aforesaid details of the persons and their kith and kin is received, the registry of this court shall send intimation to legal services authority of the district concerned which shall verify the details and the said amount shall be transferred by the registry to the legal services authority of the district concerned which shall ensure that the said amount is disbursed to the kith and kin of the migrant workers after due verification by legal service authority of the district concerned," the bench said in its order.

"The registry shall transfer the amount, as requested, to the concerned five district legal services authorities," the bench said while disposing of the petition.

The bench also noted in its order that in pursuance to its June 4 order, the petitioner has deposited an amount of Rs 25 lakh in the apex court registry.

The petitioner had earlier told the court that he wanted that the amount be used for the travel of migrant workers from Mumbai to Sant Kabir Nagar and other places in Uttar Pradesh.

On May 15, the top court had sought responses from the Centre and the governments of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra on Khan's plea seeking directions to provide safe and secure means of transportation to migrants travelling from Mumbai to their native places amid COVID-19 pandemic.

The petitioner had earlier told the apex court that there were no means for these people to go back to their native places in Uttar Pradesh from Mumbai and they were unable to access the mechanism laid down to apply for availing transport facility.

The plea had sought directions to ensure that migrant workers in Mumbai, particularly those hailing from Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, are safely transported home so that their continuous suffering in their attempts to reach their destination comes to an end. PTI ABA MNL SJK RKS MNL RKS RKS 06122105 NNNNnaging Director and Chief Financial Officer Anish Shah, however, said that if a new investor comes on board the company may even offer M&M's stake in SYMC.

"If a new investor comes on board, that automatically takes our stake down, or they may even buy our stake," Mahindra's deputy managing director, he said.

On the financial performance, Goenka said that within the confines of the economic slowdown in the industry because of the economic situation as well as COVID-19,  the company had a very good operating performance in terms of operating margin.

"We have been able to maintain operating margin at the previous year level. We have also increased our market share both in tractors and commercial vehicles."

He said that factors such as economic slowdown and then COVID-19 had a huge impact on the volume and financials in the March quarter of FY2020.

On the company's other loss-making subsidiary Mahindra Automotive North America, Shah said, “MANA as a loss-making international subsidiary is very much under our scanner as are all the international loss-making subsidiaries. If there isn't any clear path to profitability in a reasonable timeframe, then we will be taking action on the business as well," he said.

"At this point, it is going through a detailed analysis. Over the next 12 months, we will complete that for all the businesses and then we will have a final call on which ones should we stay and which ones we should exit based on capital allocation,” he added.

Rajesh Jejurikar, Executive Director – Auto and Farm sectors, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, said that the decline in volume was on account of COVID impact coupled with a fire in the facility of a key supplier in March as well as almost no sales in the last 10 days of March.

On the Mahindra-Ford tie-up, Jejurikar said that though the joint venture launch is delayed, adding that, "we see a lot of potential coming out of co-sharing of investment and technology in the JV.

"We have already seen economy of scale coming out of joint sourcing both ways. There is a lot of  work happening on product development and capacity utilisation and, of course, opportunity to export to emerging markets using the Ford network and ecosystem."

"There has been progress so far on specific products we have been working on aggregates but the JV start date is delayed unfortunately due to the shutdown," he added.

On the demand side, he said the company was  seeing very strong demand in rural areas and the key challenge was how effectively we ramp up to leverage the rural opportunity."

He said the tractor plants are operating at more than  80 per cent of the capacity and the company is working closely with all its financers to align for financing solutions.

M&M is looking at breakeven in its tractor business in the US this fiscal, he added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)