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Kolkata , Sept. 19

MR Rama Prasad Goenka, Chairman of CESC Ltd, is keen on stepping down from his post. He gave this indication at the 25th AGM of the company, citing his advancing years.

Talking to Business Line midway through the five-hour long meeting, he said he would like to step down and hand over the baton to his younger son, Mr Sanjiv Goenka, the present Vice-Chairman.

"I have been thinking along these lines, but no time frame has been decided as yet and the final decision would have to be taken by the CESC board," he said.

To a question as to who would be the vice-chairman once the younger Goenka took over the reins at CESC, he quipped "I will!". He left after sitting through the first two and half hours of the AGM.

Mr Sanjiv Goenka, who now along with the Managing Director looks after the company's day-to-day functioning, reacted conservatively saying he was not sure whether this would be good or bad for the company.

The RPG group acquired CESC in 1989 and Mr R.P. Goenka has been holding fort as its Chairman since then.

Mr Goenka, who has not taken any remuneration as Chairman, has been a Rajya Sabha MP for the last three years.

250-MW power plant planned: Talking to newspersons after the AGM, Mr Sanjiv Goenka said that the RPG group had decided to set up a 250-MW power plant in the State entailing an investment of about Rs 1,000 crore. Elaborating on the project, which he had announced at the AGM, he said that an internal committee was examining the options on the likely location.

"We cannot rule out either an expansion of the 500 MW Budge Budge unit in south 24 Parganas or a revival of the project at Balagarh in Hooghly district, which was put on the backburner a couple of years ago in the wake of acute cash crunch," Mr Goenka said.

Funding aspects would be decided by an external consultant, he said. Setting up a new generation company for this purpose could not be ruled out, he disclosed.

Mr Goenka was confident that the ongoing debt restructuring exercise would be over within the next few weeks.

He said that the price of the 33 lakh preferential shares proposed to be allotted to the management group (as per the CDR proposal) has been fixed at Rs 49.7 per share as per SEBI guidelines. This allotment, which is part of the CDR package, would increase the Goenkas' holding from 38 per cent to 41 per cent. A special resolution was moved along with the 2002-03 accounts but had to be put to the ballot on shareholders' demand.

On the proposed VRS for CESC employees, Mr Goenka said that while 500 persons would become surplus at the Mulajore unit, which would have to be closed down as per an apex court order (by December 2003), another 1,100 would be going through natural separation. Another 2,500 persons have been identified as surplus across CESC.

At the AGM, a section of shareholders demanded polls on all resolutions including those on approval of the previous two years' accounts (since 2000-01). These had to be revised in the wake of the revised tariff order awarded by the West Bengal Electricity Regulatory Commission (WBERC). The polls would be held on Saturday and the results will be known by September 22.

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