WB govt proposes takeover of Dunlop

CALCUTTA, April 8: West Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said on Wednesday that the state government wanted to take over the closed Sah...

CALCUTTA, April 8: West Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said on Wednesday that the state government wanted to take over the closed Sahagunj factory of Dunlop India Ltd temporarily. Chief minister Jyoti Basu, who would be leaving for Delhi on April 10, would discuss the issue with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, if necessary, he said.

Basu would also request Union defence minister George Fernandes to ensure that the defence orders placed with this unit were not transferred to somewhere else, Dasgupta added.

The decision to take over the Dunlop unit was taken at a high-level meeting on Wednesday convened at the instance of Jyoti Basu. The meeting was attended by the state labour minister Shanti Ranjan Ghatak, agriculture minister N Dey, MP from Hooghly Roopchand Pal and local MLA Rabin Mukherjee and representatives of the different trade unions of the company. The Dunlop management was not represented at the meeting.

Story continues below this ad

The media consultant of Dunlop said that the management had not received anyofficial communication to this effect and hence he would not be able to offer any comment.

Dasgupta said that he had requested Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) chairman S H Khan to look into the legal aspects of a possible temporary takeover of Dunlop’s Sahagunj unit. The state government would move the Centre for necessary clearance after it got the call from IDBI within a couple of days, he said.

The Board for Industrial & Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) appointed IDBI as the operating agency for Dunlop on April 6. Earlier, at the company’s first hearing before the BIFR bench on March 31, the BIFR asked IDBI to examine the accounts of Dunlop. The management of the Manu Chhabria-controlled Dunlop India Ltd referred the company to the BIFR in February to obtain a `sick’ status.

On February 8, the Dunlop management declared "temporary suspension of work" at the Sahagunj factory, which had 4500 employees on its payroll, citing labour unrest and lack of funds. Operations at its Ambattur unit inTamil Nadu was suspended the following day.