After having lost its case to SAIL with the Competition Commisssion of India, Naveen Jindal-led Jindal Steel and Power (JSPL) is knocking the doors of the steel ministry, urging it to push its case with Railways for supplying railway steel.
The company has asked steel ministry to recommend its name to the railways for buying steel from it. ?The CCI decision should not stop us from pushing our case. We have a better facility to manufacture rail steel. We have requested the steel ministry to send a recommendation letter to the railways to buy it from us,” JSPL chief executive director and deputy MD (steel, cement and syn fuel) VR Sharma, said.
The ministry, however, seems to be in no hurry to do so. It is yet to take a call on whether it would send such a letter to the railways or not. The ministry’s cold response has upset the JSPL official.
“Why should there be a monopoly? We have a better facility and produce specialised steel for the railways. But what is the point, if we do not get a chance to supply to them,” Sharma said.
At present, only government-owned Steel Authority of India (SAIL) is entitled to supply rail steel to the railways. JSPL had filed a case against railways and SAIL with the CCI to investigate the exclusive agreement between them, alleging a breach of the competition law. The CCI gave a clean chit to SAIL, saying that since SAIL has invested a huge amount of R711 crore to set up an exclusive facility in Bhilai for rail steel, and therefore, there was nothing wrong.
Railways is one of the biggest customer for SAIL. Around 9% of SAIL’s total sale of R1,900 crore comes from the Indian Railways. The company produces around 7.5 lakh tonne rail steel every year at its Bhilai plant. It is also expanding its plant and plans to install a Universal Rail Mill. The new mill will add a capacity of 1.2 mt per annum and will be set up at a cost of R1,175 crore.
JSPL also makes 121 metre-long track rails. The company manufactures variety of steel in long rail products such as Crane Rails, Flash Butt Welded Rails, etc.
