One of the two closed paper mills of Hindustan Paper Corporation (HPC) in Assam sits on a large reserve of crude oil, the union of the mill’s employees has said.
In a letter to HPC’s Kolkata-based liquidator Kuldeep Verma on July 3, the Cachar Paper Project Workers’ Union demanded the disclosure of the volume and value of the oil reserve beneath the Cachar Paper Mill complex before it is auctioned off at a “throwaway price”.
A copy of the letter was sent to the Secretary of the Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises in Delhi.
The union said it apprehended major irregularities in the auction documents and sought clarification from the liquidator prior to the sale of assets, particularly after the reserve price of the two paper mills for the auction was reduced from ₹1,139 crore by ₹170 crore.
The auctioning of the mill in southern Assam and Nagaon Paper Mill east of Guwahati was scheduled on June 30. It was cancelled as there were no takers for the two mills.
Valuation not disclosed
“More than three oilwell points exist in the Cachar Paper Mill township area and there is a land lease agreement with the ONGC. But the valuation of the oil reserve has not been disclosed anywhere in the auction notification where only the land area has been detailed,” union’s president Manobendra Chakraborty said.
The auction documents should have noted the township as an oil reserve land, he said.
The union also sought to know the criterion adopted for fixing the price of the land having oil reserve and the period of the “lease rent agreement with the ONGC”.
