Team News Riveting
Raipur, October 19
Snatching away a major poll plank from the ruling Congress party in Chhattisgarh, Union Minister of Home and Cooperative Amit Shah on Thursday said the NMDC steel plant in Chhattisgarh will not be privatised.
NMDC Steel Limited, an arm of the country’s largest iron ore producer, has set up a 3 million tonne per annum integrated steel plant in Nagarnar of Bastar district. Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inaugurated the plant on October 3 during his Jagdalpur visit.
Built at a cost of more than Rs 23,800 crore, the steel plant is a greenfield project that will produce high-quality steel. NMDC Steel Ltd Steel Plant at Nagarnar will provide employment opportunities to thousands of people in the plant as well as in ancillary and downstream industries. It will put Bastar on the steel map of the world and provide a boost to the socioeconomic development of the region.
The steel plant however became a new battleground between the BJP and the Congress in the state that goes to the assembly elections on November 7 and 17. The Congress claimed that the Centre was mooting the strategic sale of Nagarnar Steel Plant. Led by Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, Congress has been opposing any move to privatise the plant and made it an election issue asserting that the issue was related to the “sentiments of the people of Bastar”.
Shah, who was in Jagdalpur to attend a party programme on Thursday, said there was no plant to privatise the NMDC Steel plant. “The plant belongs to the people of Bastar and it will not be privatised,” Shah said while addressing a public meeting in Jagdalpur on Thursday.
