The Hindu: Kochi: Thursday, May 25, 2017.
The process
of selling three acres of land from the 30 acres in the possession of HMT Ltd the
Central PSU that owns HMT Machine Tools, Kalamassery to the National
Investigation Agency (NIA) will be completed by June.
“The
government has given the go-ahead for sale of the land and the process of
handing over shall be over by June,” B.M. Shiva Shankar, Managing Director of
the company, told The Hindu.
However, he
refused to answer if the proceeds from the sale would be shared with the
Kalamassery unit, the only profit-making subsidiary of the company, as
vociferously demanded by the trade unions.
The trade
unions have time and again rued that when the company, which was a major
manufacturer of a range of products, was restructured in 2000 into a set of
subsidiaries under a holding company, the assets went to the holding company
(HMT Ltd) and the liabilities accrued to the subsidiaries.
Bifurcation
“HMT Machine
Tools, Kalamassery, which has done rather well over the years, has suffered the
biggest setback from the bifurcation and the lopsided policies,” said an
employee of the Kalamassery unit on condition of anonymity. A huge controversy
erupted the last time the holding company chose to sell 70 acres of land to a
Mumbai-based firm, Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL) the deal
was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court.
“The holding
company would be richer by ₹8 crore from sale of the land, which had actually
been owned by the Kalamassery unit until the State government granted
unhindered transaction rights over 100 acres of land to the holding company in
the year 2000,” the employee said.
Information
obtained under the Right to Information Act (RTI) early this year shows that
the State government had allotted 900 acres of land to HMT in the State in
1963. But the extent of land actually handed over to the company in then
Thrikkakara north, south and Aluva villages was 781.59 acres.