Kelkar’s ‘brilliant idea’

NEW DELHI: It would appear there were desperate efforts to salvage the disinvestment of BPCL and HPCL without putting them up for strategic sale the disinvestment department had planned.
One such attempt was made by advisor to the finance minister Vijay Kelkar. He rang up HDFC chief Deepak Parekh for a formula that would click with both the mantris and the markets.
Narrating this quest for the magic formula, Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie said Parekh came up with a ‘brilliant idea’ — sell 14.9 per cent to a strategic partner (this would not trigger the mandatory open offer under the takeover code), sell 15 per cent to the public and another 15 per cent to the institutions. This way disinvestment would happen, but no one private company would appear to have gained control of the PSU ‘crown jewels’.
The idea, even if ‘brilliant’, didn’t pass muster. For, who would be interested in buying 14.9 per cent of a PSU when the Tatas with 26 per cent of VSNL keeps having run-ins with the government?
Having a dig at this sort of ‘brilliant ideas’, Shourie said they actually diverted focus as people get taken up by them for a while before returning to ground zero.
The minister was speaking at a book-release function. The book, Jairam Ramesh’s Kautalya Today, he was happy to say, didn’t contain any such ‘brilliant ideas’.
Kelkar didn’t know Shourie knew about his confabulations. “I used my journalistic skills to find it out,� said the ex-editor. To Kelkar’s credit, his applause of Shourie’s speech was among the loudest.