A team of officials from the Telangana government, including those from Singareni Collieries Company Limited, is currently at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh to examine the possibility of participation in bids for the disinvestment of Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) the corporate entity of the Vizag Steel Plant (VSP).

Telangana Industry Minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday said that the state government will take a decision based on their reports. However, he slammed the BJP and alleged that privatisation of the Vizag Steel Plant was actually part of a larger conspiracy to benefit the Adani’s steel plant at Mundra in Gujarat. He demanded that the Bailadila mining contract with Adani steel plant should be revoked and awarded to VSP in AP and the proposed Bayyaram steel plant in Telangana.

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The minister said the Centre did not deliberately allot iron ore mines to VSP. The steel plant was in the red due to the absence of captive iron ore mines.

Rama Rao alleged that there was a major conspiracy by the BJP government behind privatisation bid for VSP which was against the interests of both Telugu states. He reminded that the Centre had declared that establishing a steel plant at Bayyaram in Telangana, as promised in the AP Reorganisation Act, was not feasible due to low grade iron ore.

The BRS Government in the state had maintained that it could be made feasible by allotting iron ore mines at Bailadila in Chhattisgarh which was 160 km away from the Bayyaram steel plant. It was also ready to pay half the cost for the slurry pipeline it had proposed between Bailadila and Bayyaram. VSP was about 600 km away from Bailadila and iron ore reserves could be used both for the revival of VSP and setting up of the Bayyaram steel plant. But the Centre did not find either feasible.

Instead, once the Adani Group floated the iron ore company in September 2018 and announced setting up of an integrated steel plant at Mundra in Gujarat about 1800 km away from Bailadila along with Korean steelmaker POSCO the Centre allotted the mines terming the joint venture to be feasible. The conspiracy behind denying allotment of mines to either Bayyaram or VSP was to hand over the 1.4 billion tonnes of high grade iron reserves to the Adanis. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is handing over the Navratna PSUs to his two favourite ratnas from Gujarat,”said Rao.