Supreme Court delays government plan to sell Hindustan Zinc stake

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the government to not proceed with any sale of its minority stake in Hindustan Zinc, a senior government official said, further delaying majority owner Vedanta Resources Ltd's bid to take total control.

"We were not in a hurry anyway," Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar told Reuters. "We will go by what the court says."

The union cabinet approved a stake sale in Hindustan Zinc in 2014 but a group of central government officers approached the court to stop the divestment without parliamentary approval. The court will hear the matter further.

Billionaire Anil Agarwal-controlled mining conglomerate Vedanta Resources Plc holds 64.92 percent of Hindustan Zinc's shares, while the government is the second-biggest owner with 29.54 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

 

Around two years ago Vedanta offered about $2.94 billion for the government's stake in Hindustan Zinc, whose total current market capitalization is more than $8.5 billion.

A stake sale would have helped the finance ministry inch closer to its languishing asset-sale programme for this fiscal year. The government has managed to raise less then a fifth of the roughly $10 billion it had projected in divestments for 2015-2016.

($1 = 67.6500 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Krishna N. Das; editing by Susan Thomas)