ROURKELA: The Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), which has been sustaining loss to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees annually, is embroiled in a scam of more than Rs 100 crore in the last two years for selling blast furnace (BF) granulated slag directly at lower price by circumventing the official procedure of e-auction.
The matter came to light when Union Tribal Affairs Minister and Sundargarh MP Jual Oram in a letter to Union Steel and Mines Minister Choudhury Birendra Singh on March 24 cited irregularities in BF granulated slag sale and other issues. Following Oram’s letter, the RSP on April 29 finalised sale of BF granulated slag weighing about 3.24 lakh tonne at a total value of above Rs 38 crore through e-auction. Going by the old rate, it would have fetched only Rs 8.5 crore.
The sources informed that the e-auction price of seven lots of BF slag ranged between Rs 1,065 and Rs 1,105 per tonne against the previous fixed price of open sale (direct sale) by rail at Rs 275. This corroborates the claims of corruption in direct sale to favour OCL (India) Ltd and a few other cement plants which were procuring granulated slag at three times less price of now quoted Rs 1,105 in e-auction.
The sources further claimed that Additional Chief Vigilance Officer of RSP BL Agarwal had been insisting on e-auction of BF slag for around 18 months. Instead of considering the vigilance officer’s suggestion, he was handed out premature transfer order on May 5 raising suspicion on the intent of the steel plant’s management.
At present, BF 4 and 5, which are in operation, produce about 2,500 tonnes of granulated slag per day. In 2015-16, the RSP had faced gross loss of Rs 2,583 crore and the figure is likely to be around Rs 2,000 crore in 2016-17.
In his letter, a copy of which is available with this paper, Oram had described open sale of slag as a “motivated decision” of a few senior executives with the knowledge of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for “pecuniary benefits”.
The Union Minister also cited the e-auction practice followed by IISCO, Burnpur and Bhilai Steel Plant of SAIL and presented a comparative statement to show how undue favour was shown to OCL (India) Ltd. Oram also claimed that using similar modus operandi, the RSP was selling crude tar and pig iron at much lower prices.
He has sought the Union Steel Ministry’s intervention to institute an inquiry, immediately transfer CEO Ashwini Kumar and investigate the role of Kumar’s immediate predecessor.
Talking to this paper Oram said, a departmental inquiry is underway by the Steel Ministry.
While CEO Kumar did not respond to an e-mail query, Chief of Communication of RSP Ramendra Kumar said, “Whatever was done was done as per the laid down guidelines.”