The Hindu Business Line : Bengal Govt `offers' reins of IISCO to Jindals

THE West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has shocked Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) with his formal declaration of help to the Jindals to acquire Indian Iron & Steel Co. Ltd.(IISCO), a subsidiary of SAIL. IISCO is currently firmly under the wings of SAIL and is on the path of revival.

Speaking in Mumbai on Sunday at a road-show on West Bengal organised by ABP Ltd., the West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, offered Mr Sajjan Jindal, of the Rs 4,000-crore Jindal Group, the reins of IISCO while responding to a query from the steel entrepreneur on the fate of his bid for the Burnpur-based steel plant.

According to a report in The Telegraph today, the Chief Minister did not see any future for IISCO and asked Mr Jindal to be prepared to take over IISCO.

According to the report, Mr Bhattacharjee added that he would try to convince the Union Steel Minister, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, and his Ministry officials of the benefits and argue the case on behalf of the Jindals.

Senior SAIL officials were taken aback by the development. Though all of them preferred not to be quoted on the "sensitive" issue, they said that there was no plan to divest any stake in IISCO at this point of time.

The Union Steel Ministry has already unveiled a Rs 341-crore revival package for the ailing company. In fact, in the first quarter of 2004-05, IISCO registered a net profit of Rs 65 crore.

"We had tried to sell-off IISCO earlier, but there were no takers. Now we have invested money and have almost turned around the company. We are not considering selling Salem or Alloy Steel Plants, the two weaker units. So why should we sell off IISCO after investing money in it?" a senior official said.

On the sidelines of Sunday's meet, Mr Jindal went so far as to announce a Rs 15,000-crore revival package for IISCO, under which its capacity will be increased to 5 million tonnes per annum.

When asked to shed some light on the issue, the corporate communications department of SAIL said: "IISCO is being revived as per the guidelines of set out in the BIFR-approved revival package."

Mr H.M.P. Singh, managing director of IISCO, told Business Line: "I have no knowledge of any development of selling out IISCO".

Incidentally, SAIL is keen on exploiting the rich iron ore mines of IISCO. There is even the proposal of merging IISCO into SAIL so that the Burnpur plant becomes another unit of the steel giant.