After president, chairman of Surat’s ambitious diamond trade centre resigns; core committee to meet soon on future course

The problems for the SDB doesn’t stop at just the resignations. PSP Projects, which built the Surat Diamond Bourse, had filed a case against the authorities of the SDB over not clearing pending payments.

The Commercial Court of Surat had on March 11 passed an order directing the SDB authorities to furnish irrevocable bank guarantees of Rs 125 crore within four weeks to PSP Projects Limited. It was hearing a case of alleged non-payment of dues worth Rs 631.32 crore.

Inauguration of SDB and its hurdles

The SDB was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 17. Until March, no major interest was shown by the shop owners in opening their offices at the SDB. Barely 135 diamond offices have opened out of the 4,200 offices housed at the bourse.

The SDB authorities claim that the furniture work of the other offices are in progress.

In January 2024, Sakariya handed his resignation to the core committee members and Lakhani. Nagjibhai had cited his health issues for resigning from the post.

However, sources said Nagjibhai was facing pressure to convince the diamond merchants to open their offices at the SDB. Unable to bear the pressure any further, he tendered his resignation and assured the core committee members that he would work behind the curtains and said new people should be given a chance.

Lakhani had purchased a couple of floors in the A Wing of the SDB and has the largest offices in the facility, which spreads across 1.17 lakh square feet.

Before the Surat diamond bourse was inaugurated, Lakhani had completely shifted his business from Mumbai and started offices in the A wing of the SDB last November.

The Mumbai offices were totally shut down and even the employees shifted from Mumbai to Surat. Lakhani had built over 1,000 houses for his employees near the SDB. Experts say that the step taken by Lakhani was to motivate other diamond businessmen of Mumbai to shift their businesses to Surat at the SDB.

However, this move failed as nobody was interested in shifting their entire operations to Surat, while some others have assured to expand to the SDB.

Possible reason behind Lakhani’s resignation

Talking to The Indian Express ahead of the meeting, SDB core committee member Laljibhai Patel said, “Vallabhbhai has been upset since the last few days over shifting his entire business back to Mumbai. This may be the reason behind his resignation. He along with our team are working hard to make the SDB fully functional. The furniture work is also in progress.”

He added, “Today, a core committee meeting has been organised at the SDB in which a decision will be taken for the future steps. We will also decide who will be made the new chairman of the SDB.”

Meanwhile, The Indian Express failed to get a comment from Lakhani as repeated phone calls to him went unanswered. Lakhani’s company, Kiran Gems, is the country’s largest exporter of polished diamonds.

The members of the core committee are Patel, Lakhani, Sevantibhai Shah, Mathurbhai Sawani, Diyalbhai Vaghani and Arvind Dhanera.

‘Bigger than Pentagon’

The SDB has been set up at a cost of Rs 3,200 crore, with an aim to shift and expand the diamond trading business from Mumbai to Surat and to make the city a trading hub of the gem. The bourse is built on an area of 66 lakh square feet at DREAM (Diamond Research and Mercantile) city, in Surat. A Delhi-based Morphogenesis firm, which had designed the bourse, claims that the SDB is bigger than the largest office space in the world – the Pentagon of the United States.