NEW DELHI: Subrata Roy will stay in Tihar Jail till March 11 after the Supreme Court summarily rejected an offer by the Sahara Group to pay Rs 19,000 crore in installments, starting with an upfront payment of Rs 2,500 crore. The court termed the offer “dishonourable”.“We will hear your plea on Tuesday,” Justices KS Radhakrishnan and JS Khehar told senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan, lawyer for one of the imprisoned directors. Dhavan pleaded with the court to shift Roy and the other directors to police custody to make it easier for Roy’s executives and lawyers to meet him. The Sahara chief is lodged in Tihar Jail.“It’s a problem meeting him,” Dhavan said. Senior advocate CA Sundaram also urged the court to free Roy to enable him to raise the required funds. “You have been outside for oneand-half years and you have been inside only for two days,”Roy and Advisors Free to Ready Another Proposal“He (Roy) is the only person who can find the money, but he’s not in a position to do so. He will have to negotiate for loans, etc. There’s no other speaking face for the company. If anybody has the creditworthiness, it is him,” Sundaram said, but the bench shrugged off his plea. Senior advocate Ravi Shankar Prasad stressed Roy’s credibility. “Not a single investor is complaining,” he said.“That’s because there are none,” Justice Khehar quipped. Prasad contested this, saying the company had 7-crore-plus investors. On Friday, the judges brushed aside the latest Sahara offer, saying it was not worthy of consideration. Justice Khehar said: “Don’t make us assemble unless you have a good offer. You had to pay last year. Now you want another one-and-a-half years.This is not an honourable offer, it is a dishonorable offer.” Justice Radhakrishnan asked Sahara to file another proposal saying: “We can’t accept this proposal.” Justice Khehar indicated the bench wouldn’t be happy with anything other than payment of the dues to Sebi “Give us money,” he said. Earlier, Sahara had offered to pay Rs 2,500 crore upfront within three working days if the top court lifted an order freezing its bank accounts. Sahara also said it would pay the rest of the Rs 17,400 crore in six installments, with the last payment on July 31, 2015.Market regulator Sebi, which has been charged with the task of returning the money to investors after verification, contested the proposal on several counts. Sebi counsel Pratap Venugopal said the proposal was unacceptable as the amount to be returned with interest amounted to Rs 37,000 crore, and not Rs 25,000 crore.He also pointed out that Sahara had already taken one-and-a-half years to pay, and accepting the proposal would mean giving them another one-and-a-half years. There was also no default clause in the proposal. “What happens if they default?” Venugopal asked. The bench then rejected the offer. It, however, permitted his financial consultants and lawyers tomeet Roy to firm up another proposal. Sundaram tried to prevail upon the bench to accept the upfront payment of Rs 2,500 crore. “Rs 2,500 crore is a lot of money,” he told the court, but the bench ignored his plea. “Lakhs of workers’ employment is also at stake. The company has to survive,” Ravi Shankar Prasad said, but the bench remained unmoved.Earlier in the day, Sahara had prevailed upon Justice Radhakrishnan to constitute a bench with Justice Khehar to hear its proposal and let Roy walk free to arrange the rest. In his preliminary observations, Justice Radhakrishnan had told Sahara that its first payment had to be a “more attractive figure”. “…Sahara has already depos ited a sum of Rs 5,120 crore with Sebi on December 15, 2012. A sum of Rs 480.41 crore has been received as interest on this ….Sebi has attached and withdrawn Rs 21.63 crore from the accounts of other Sahara entities…. Thus, in total, an amount of approximately Rs 5,620 crore is lying with Sebi,” the Sahara proposal said, while offering to repay the rest Rs 17,400 crore in installments.It also urged the court to return all title deeds, submitted as security to the market regulator, to enable Sahara raise money for the repayments. Once Sebi verified and returned the money to investors, any balance may be returned to Sahara, said the Lucknow-based business group. Justice Radhakrishnan said, dismissing Sundaram’s plea.