Shourie challenges FM on Centaur deal

Former Minister for Disinvestment Arun Shourie took a combative posture after Finance Minister P Chidambaram told Parliament yesterday that Shourie had taken an "active interest" in processing the transaction of disinvesting the Juhu Centaur Hotel.

Chidambaram had told Parliament yesterday that he was uncomfortable with the term "interest" since it was a loaded term, instead he preferred to say that Shourie had taken "active interest in processing the transaction" as the disinvestment minister. However, Shourie today dared him to "investigate him without waiting for any report."

Shourie seemed to have trained his guns on the finance minister saying he (Chidambaram) had appointed a retired bureaucrat to "dig dirt" on the deal. "There is an effort to dig dirt. They appointed a retired bureaucrat S Lakshminarayanan, picked by Chidambaram, to look into disinvestment deals," he said.

"I am prepared to answer any question and face any enquiry . My appeal to the Prime Minister and Finance Minister is that the enquiry should be open," he said.

While parrying questions on the different valuation of the property ranging from Rs 246 crore, to Rs 214 crore and finally the set reserve price of Rs 101.60 crore, Shourie said the government should release all the three reports prepared by advisors on valuation and process of sale by joint secretaries to find answer to this.

"When we opened the bids, when only one bidder remained in the field we were in fact delighted that the bid was for Rs 153 crore, a lot more than the reserve price of Rs 101.60 crore," said Shourie.

Shourie began by saying that he quite agreed with the remarks of Chidambaram that he took "active interest" in this particular deal. "I took active interest in every little task assigned to me be it in disinvestment, commerce, planning or telecom ministries," he quipped.

In fact, Shourie tried to put the finance minister on the mat and said the recommendation to sell Juhu Centaur was made by disinvestment commission in 1997 when Chidambaram was finance minister. It was Chidambaram as the finance minister under Deve Gowda and IK Gujral who started the process of disinvestment in this hotel," he said.

He admitted that the deadline to pay up for the property was relaxed twice for the buyer but defended this by saying that the government did not want to lose the extra money that the lone bidder Tulip Hospitality Services Limited (THSL) had quoted for the property.

"Only after getting assurance from the banks that they would support the bidder that the decision was taken not to encash bank guarantees," he said adding by encashing bank guarantees we would have got small sum of money but would have been saddled with a property which no one other than THSL had shown interest in.

"If the company has now become an NPA, the government is free to move against it," said Shourie.