A day after Congress leader Sukhjinder Raj Singh (lalli) Majithia alleged that benefit worth hundreds of crores were given to a company related to former Akali minister Bikram Singh Majithia during the allocation of power tenders related to sugar mills in the state, the Sayara Industries limited on Sunday termed it “absolutely baseless”.
“We would like to highlight that we conduct our business through utmost propriety and ethics and take pride in the fact that in 100 years of our existence, we have succeeded in guarding these values. We have always relied upon our technical abilities and expertise in conducting our business,” said SIl director Pardeep Ahuja.
Ahuja maintained that the SIl has not caused any losses to the cooperative sugar mills as alleged, and the Company is, in no way, associated with the company A2Z as alleged. A2Z is a publicly listed Company having no relation with Saraya Industries limited, he added.
In 2008, Punjab Sugarfed came out with a public tender in seven different newspapers inviting Company to setup cogen plants on BOOT (built own operate and transfer) basis at nine cooperative sugar mills, he said.
“We also participated in this public tender by sending our bid document. The bidders were asked to give their bids on the percentage of share of revenue they would share with the cooperative sugar mill from the power generated from this Cogen project at the sugar mill. The tenders were conducted in an absolutely open and transparent manner,” he added.
Director said that SIl was the highest bidder in four of these nine projects. “The project is setting up of Rs 85 crore power plant by SIl and at the end of the BOOT period giving this huge asset free of cost (zero value) to the cooperative mill,” he said adding that at no time was there any right of SIl on the cooperative sugar mills “as has been wrongly alleged yesterday”.He pointed that in 2011, cooperative mills initiated arbitration against SIl and the arbitrator dealt with the issue and award was passed based on the merits of the case.“The figures of Rs 915 crores have no credibility and are arbitrary…We would be able to comment on the same once the details of these figures are provided to us,” he added.
A day before, Congress leader Sukhjinder Raj Singh (lalli) Majithia had alleged that benefit worth hundreds of crores were given to a company related to former Akali minister Bikram Singh Majithia during the allocation of power tenders related to sugar mills in the state.
lalli had alleged gross irregularities in the allocation of tenders for upgrading, modernising and installing cogeneration in eight mills, resulting in huge losses to the state exchequer and rendering the cooperative sugar mills incapable of being self-sustaining.