http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?270929
Did Arun Shourie gift the Tatas 773 acres of land which should have been demerged before VSNL’s disinvestment but wasn’t? SAIKAT DATTA Buy one, get one free is a time-honoured way to sell merchandise. But when the same principle is applied to the sale of a crown jewel, it attracts controversy. This is what happened nearly nine years ago, when the NDA government disinvested in Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) in favour of the Tatas. It gave away for Rs 1,439 crore a strategic public sector undertaking (PSU) flush with cash reserves, a monopoly over international and STD calls, infrastructure worth hundreds of crore and over 1,200 acres of land. Of this, 773.13 acres was surplus (a land bank meant for future expansion) and at least 387 acres should have come back to the government and the rest to earlier shareholders. However, neither Arun Shourie as the disinvestment minister nor Pradip Baijal as secretary in the same ministry were paying much attention to this huge land bank circa 2002. The book value (when VSNL procured the land in the ’80s) of this 773 acres, distributed in Delhi’s prime Greater Kailash area and Chhattarpur, Pune, Calcutta and Chennai, was Rs 17.72 lakh. According to a draft NDA cabinet note (No. 37-9/2002-OC) prepared by the department of telecommunications and accessed by Outlook, the total value of this land in 2002 was put at a measly Rs 151 crore when the going rate for an acre of land at the time in Delhi’s plush Greater Kailash was Rs 2 crore. That would have meant, in 2002, all of Rs 135 crore for just the 67.5 acres VSNL has in GK. Today, the same land is worth Rs 16 crore an acre. VSNL holds 58 acres in Chhattarpur—currently going at Rs 12 crore an acre—524 acres in Pune, 35 acres in Calcutta and 85 acres in Chennai. A reasonable estimation would put the current total value of the 773 acres anywhere between Rs 6,000 crore and Rs 8,000 crore.
