VSP's EOI call for buying its steel, not the plant: BJP

HYDERABAD: The BJP on Tuesday dismissed the Telangana state government’s move to “acquire” the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and “prevent its privatisation” calling the announcement, and the ongoing visit to the VSP by a team of officials from Singareni Collieries Company Limited a blatant lie.

The BJP declared that the VSP was never for sale and all that the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, a public sector undertaking that owns the VSP, had called for was an expression of interest from anyone if they were interested in investing money in advance for buying 73 lakh tonnes of steel from VSP a year for the next five years, pay the money in advance.

“The RINL plan all along was to invest the money from such a transaction for increasing production capacity at the VSP. There was never any question of selling the plant away. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and the BRS party’s attempt all along has been to project themselves as saving the VSP from private clutches. The expression of the intent document released by RINL makes it clear that the plant is not for sale, and that it wants an assured buyer for its steel,” BJP Telangana’s official spokesperson Kishore Poreddy told a news conference.
Kishore Poreddy said “the VSP has been in news over the past two days, generating a lot of debate in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. What the VSP wants is what is called trade financing. The BRS and its leaders are projecting as if they are out to buy the plant. This is blatant misdirection to divert the attention of people of Telangana from the serious cases that the BRS government is finding itself embroiled in with each passing day.”  

And saying that SCCL, groaning under a Rs 13,500 crore deficit thanks to the Telangana government’s policies, is in no shape to place any bids, he added.
“This whole effort is to divert the attention of the people from the fact that the BRS party lost its recognition in Andhra Pradesh, and did not get a national party status and is restricted to what it is, just another regional party,” N.V. Subhash, BJP spokesperson said. He said the effort was also to divert attention from TSPSC paper leak scandal that has engulfed this government and to “play with sentiments of the people in Andhra Pradesh, and divide the people in that state so that AP Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is KCR’s friend, comes back to power.”