The Hindu Business Line : Arun Shourie recounts IPCL sell-off process

THE Union Minister for Disinvestment, Mr Arun Shourie, today admitted there have been "unbelievable pressures throughout to disqualify Reliance" from bidding for Indian Petrochemical Corporation Ltd.

"The pressures brought not just this transaction, they brought almost the whole disinvestment programme to a halt," said the Minister, speaking at the first Dhirubhai Ambani memorial lecture, exactly a year after the industrialist's death.

Dhirubhai Ambani had bid Rs 231 per share of IPCL, almost twice that of the nearest rival, Indian Oil Corporation, Mr Shourie said. "The Government, and, as time will show, the country were the immediate, and huge gainers," he noted. However the Cabinet decided that if Reliance did not fall foul of the guidelines, it must be allowed to bid, no matter what, he said.

Reliance eventually went on to win IPCL.

Mr Shourie, considered a critic of the Ambanis a couple of decades ago when he was a full-time journalist, spoke about how his "acquaintance with Dhirubhai went through an almost 180-degree turn over the years."

In the beginning, he said, he first learnt about him through the articles of his (Mr Shourie's) colleague Mr S. Gurumurthy. The point of most of the articles (which appeared in Indian Express during the days of the late Mr Ramnath Goenka) was that Reliance had done something in excess of what had been licensed, it was producing in excess of that capacity, said the Minister.

"Most would say today that those restrictions and conditions should not have been there in the first place, that they are what held the country back," said Mr Shourie.

"And that the Dhirubhais are to be thanked, not once but twice over: they set up world-class companies and facilities in spite of those regulations, and thus laid the foundations for the growth all of us claim credit for today; second, by exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them, they helped create the case for scrapping those regulations, they helped make the case for reforms."

Mr Shourie said his acquaintance with Dhirubhai Ambani changed over the years: "In part, as I said, for an intellectual reason: we had all got convinced that persons like him had done the country a service, they had put up world-class facilities in India in spite of the shackles by which governments had sought to confine them. In part, because I had got to meet him a few times."

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