VSP privatisation row: BJP leaders meet Union Steel Minister

Urging the concerned authorities to consider not selling Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) for its privatisation, delegates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders presented a memorandum. On Monday, the gathering, led by the party’s State president Somu Veerraju visited the Union Minister for Steel, Dharmendra Pradhan in New Delhi, asking him to pull out the choice to sell away the Central government’s stake in the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP).

The BJP appointment needed the Union Minister to not gander at the steel plant just regarding benefit and misfortune, yet consider the struggles of individuals of Andhra Pradesh (AP) went through in order to establish VSP. Among the party leaders who attended the meeting were PVN Madhav, MLC, BJP national general secretary, and former Union Minister, Daggubati Purandeswari along with P. Vishnu Kumar Raju and Ch. Adinarayana Reddy.

Here is the tweet from the BJP party’s state President, Somu Veerraju regarding the meeting with the Union Minister of Steel.

To recall, the Cabinet approved the implementation of strategic disinvestment in order to privatise VSP. The Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd. (RINL), also known as Vizag Steel Plant, is a ‘Navratna’ PSU that runs with a capacity of 6.3 million tonnes per annum (mt). It may be noted that the Central Government currently holds a 100 percent stake in the company that makes products used in the construction industry.

Reportedly, the decision to approve the privatisation of the VSP was taken by the government a couple of weeks ago. Furthermore, the Cabinet entrusted powers to the Alternative Mechanism headed by the Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, to decide whether the subsidiaries of Vizag Steel Plant will be part of the transaction, depending on the feedback from potential investors.