While the country grapples with the issue of how to provide land for companies that wish to set up industries, Steel Secretary Atul Chaturvedi has a solution. At a Ficci seminar on steel, Chaturvedi recalled his days as fertiliser secretary and said that while steel companies continue to face problems with land acquisition, none of them ever approached the fertiliser ministry to acquire the huge land bank of 16,000-18,000 acres belonging to sick public sector fertiliser units.
It’s not clear what the steel sector executives in the audience thought of the suggestion, but Ficci Secretary General Amit Mitra joked that Chaturvedi shouldn’t have offered the consulting for free.