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Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh alleged on Friday that the central government under Narendra Modi is solely responsible for the uncertainty surrounding SAIL units, which were proposed to be divested. The Congress leader said in a post on X that it appears to him that the privatisation has been called off.
"Five years back the Modi government decided to sell off three units of SAIL: the Alloys Steel Plant at Durgapur, the Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Plant at Bhadravati and the Salem Steel Plant. Now it appears that the privatisation has been called off. It is a victory, no doubt for the workers who agitated against the sale and for parties like the Indian National Congress that had stoutly opposed the ill-thought move," the X post read. "But the uncertainty these past few years have affected the companies for which the Modi Govt is solely responsible." Jairam Ramesh's post comes after the government decided to scrap the privatisation of SAIL's Salem Steel Plant (SSP) in Tamil Nadu. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) had accorded 'in-principle' approval for the strategic disinvestment of Salem Steel Plant (SSP), Salem, in 2019. "Multiple EoIs had been received and bidders were shortlisted. However, due to lack of interest of shortlisted bidders to proceed further with the transaction, Government of India, with the approval of Alternative Mechanism (Empowered Group of Ministers) has decided to annul the current EoI thereby terminating the present transaction," Department of Investment and Public Asset Management said in a notification on Wednesday. Earlier in 2019, it reportedly decided to halt the privatisation of Durgapur-based Alloys Steels Plant (ASP) while in 2022, the sale of Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Plant (VISP) in Bhadravati, Karnataka, was called off citing a lack of interest from bidders. (ANI)
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