The Bombay High Court today extended the stay on merger of crisis-hit National Spot Exchange Lmited (NSEL) with parent Financial Technologies (FTIL) till February 4. It has asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to respond by January 23.The court has fixed the next hearing of the case for February 4, 2015. Justice V M Kanade also issued a contempt of court notice to NSEL investors as they had asked him to recuse himself from the case citing that Kanade's son had represented in court NSEL defaulter PD Agro's case. He asked the counsels of FMC and MCA who had recommended the merger if they had any objection on him taking up the matter and offered to recuse himself. Both the counsels, however, said that they had full faith in Justice Kanade. The October 21 merger proposal of the ministry has been challenged by FTIL. FTIL's counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi had earlier argued that the government issued the draft order under Section 396 of the Companies Act. This has been used only on four occasions in the past to merge government companies. It has never been used for forcible merger of any private companies.