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SC not to go into correctness of Balco valuation

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that it would not go into the correctness of the valuation of the assets of Balco before the Centre sold 51 per cent of its share in the PSU to Sterlite Industries for Rs 5.51 billion.

This was observed by a three-judge Bench headed by Justice B N Kirpal during the hearing of a bunch of petitions challenging the government's decision to sell majority stake in the profit-making PSU at Korba in Chhattisgarh.

Attacking the valuation of the aluminium plant, counsel for the Balco Employees Union said the whole evaluation process was carried out in a short period of five days by one P V Rao, who had evaluated the assets of the company at Rs 10.72 billion.

The counsel, Deepankar Gupta said the whole divestment process was illegal, arbitrary and unfair and the employees were never involved in the divestment process though they were the most-affected parties.

The advocate general of Chhattisgarh contended that the Centre, being in the know of the restrictions on transfer of tribal land imposed by the Supreme Court, still went ahead with transferring the management control of the company to a private party.

However, the Court asked the advocate general to reply on Thursday as to why the restrictions spelled out by the Court under Schedule V of the Constitution will not be applicable to government-owned companies.

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