Hyderabad: Union minister G. Kishan Reddy said that the BRS government has pushed Telangana’s Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) into debt and demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao release a white paper on the situation.
Speaking to reporters in the national capital on Wednesday, the minister said that although the Union Government has a 49 percent stake in Singareni, the administration is under the control of the state government, which has a 51 percent stake.
He said that the political interference by the Kalvakuntla family is high and factors such as back-door privatisation, significant reduction of jobs, total collapse of the economic situation, and security lapses have taken Singareni to the brink of collapse.
The minister stated that SCCL had Rs.3,500 crore surplus funds when Telangana was formed. According to calculations up to January 2023, the state government needs to explain to the people of Telangana the reasons for getting it into debt and liabilities worth Rs 10,000 crore.
Kishan Reddy asked the BRS government to explain why Singareni's turnover is increasing but profits are not increasing commensurately. He said that SCCL is being brought to a situation where the management cannot pay the salaries of the employees without incurring debts.
He said that Coal India Limited (CIL), which is 10 times bigger than Singareni, currently has outstanding debts of Rs 12,000 crores. The fact that Singareni has debts and liabilities of Rs 10,000 cr reflects the situation faced by the public sector undertaking.
The Union minister pointed out that while the Kalvakuntla family and BRS leaders are bringing down the entire Singareni ecosystem and criticising the Center for trying to privatise the institution, it is actually the BRS government that has privatised Singareni through unscrupulous back-channels.
He reminded the BRS government that the Prime Minister and several union ministers have categorically explained multiple times that the Government of India has no intention to privatise SCCL. Kishan Reddy stated that Kalvakuntla family has forgotten that mines are auctioned through public auctions across the country.
