Balco sale: Sonia asks govt to clarify position

Congress President Sonia Gandhi has sought a clarification from the finance ministry about the sale of a majority stake in the Bharat Aluminium Company Limited (Balco) to Sterlite Industries owned by Anil Agrawal.

This came in response to a six-page letter to her from Congress MP Chandra Shekhar Dubey who sought her intervention to get the UPA regime to terminate the Shareholder Agreement with Sterlite Industries and get back the 51 per cent stake of Balco. The Congress MP also repeated allegations of Agrawal's links with powerful politicians including Finance Minister P Chidambaram, cited in a book.

Chidambaram has already issued public clarifications that he resigned from the board of Vedanta when he became a minister and was given charge of the Department of Disinvestment.

In a letter dated September 20, 2006, Mangla Prasad from the office of the Congress President at 10, Janpath, wrote to S Krishnan, Private Secretary to the FM, saying that he had been asked to place the correspondence between Sonia Gandhi and the MP before the FM.

The ministry should send comments on the actual status (regarding Dubey's allegations in the letter) to the Congress president, said Prasad's letter, a copy of which is in possession of Business Standard.

The letter from 10, Janpath has been doing rounds on the tables of the Disinvestment and Finance Secretaries since then, as is evident from the notings on it.

The Congress President's somewhat unusual intervention has come at a time when the UPA regime is seized with the Balco issue, having refused to encash the cheque given by Sterlite Industries while exercising the call option to buy the residual 49 per cent stake in the erstwhile public sector enterprise. The matter is also subjudice.

The way the MP's letter has been entertained by 10, Janpath, has come as a surprise to many Congressmen who would otherwise have expected the Congress President to ignore it. It also suggests a degree of micromanagement of the UPA government by the Congress party.

Dubey says Anil Agrawal enjoys the support of "powerful lobby", including former Cabinet Secretary and India's Ambassador to the US, Naresh Chandra. The Congress MP added that many other powerful dignitaries including ex-CM of Tamil Nadu Jayalalithaa and late Pramod Mahajan of the BJP helped Agrawal directly or indirectly.

The Congress MP further demands that there should be a proper investigation of assets/belongings and present status of top officials of the Ministries of Mines and Disinvestment who helped in the under-valuation of Balco.

"I may also appreciate if all the powerful lobby working directly/indirectly to favour/support Anil Agrawal for their vested interests should also be exposed...." the letter says.