Uttar Pradesh sugar mill handed over to industrialist
By IANSTuesday, August 17, 2010
LUCKNOW - A recently disinvested sugar mill in Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh was Tuesday handed over to industrialist Ponty Chadda amid tight security.
Kundan Sugar Mill in Amroha, about 400 km from here, was formally handed over to Wave Industries, owned by Chadda.
Chadda’s representatives came in a motorcade of 40 vehicles surrounded by private gunmen and a heavy police contingent to keep protesting employees of the mill at bay.
The employees who were opposed to the sale of the mill, raised anti-government slogans but did not interfere with the transfer process that was carried out under government protection.
Flaying the takeover, former legislator V.M. Singh, who heads the UP Congress Kisan Cell, alleged gross undervaluation of the mill’s assets by the Mayawati government.
“The Amroha sugar mill that was sold for Rs. 17.10 crores, owns 74 acres of land in the heart of the town with four huge bungalows, a guest house, the official residence of the district judge, a circuit house, besides 300 residential quarters of employees, warehouses, building, plant and machinery and inventories of 8,000 bags of raw sugar, 5,275 bags of finished sugar and 10,400 quintals of molasses - together worth not less than Rs.250 crores,” Singh claimed.
“Besides, a sprawling bungalow on New Delhi’s Kasturba Gandhi Marg is also worth at least Rs.200 crore,” he added.
“While the current market value of the land belonging to the mill in Amroha was far higher, even at the circle rate, it is worth Rs.100 crores,” he said.
