Pawan Hans undervalued, divestment raises many questions, doubts: KTR

Hyderabad: Even as the Central government last week approved the sale of its stake in Pawan Hans to private company, IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao said the deal raises many questions and doubts.

Pawan Hans is a Government-owned-helicopter service provider based at Noida, under the ownership of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It has cumulatively flown more than one million hours and has had 2.5 million landings of its fleet since its formation.

In a tweet, Rama Rao pointed out that Pawan Hans was valued at Rs 3,700 crore in 2017 and its paid-up equity share capital was Rs 245.61 crore. “Then how come the stake was sold at Rs 211 crore? Any answers NPA Government?” Rama Rao sought to know.

The BJP government at the Centre last week approved the sale of its stake in Pawan Hans along with transfer of management control to an entity called Star9 Mobility. The stake sale pegs Pawan Hans total value at Rs 414 crore. Star9 was incorporated on October 29 last year. It mentions its industry as ‘Support and auxiliary transport activities; activities of travel agencies’.

Star9 Mobility’s authorised capital (which is the maximum amount of share capital for which shares can be issued by a company) is Rs one lakh. Its paid-up capital (amount for which shares are issued to the shareholder for which payment was made by the shareholder) is also Rs one lakh. As per the norms, for bidders to auction Pawan Hans, the bidder should have a networth of Rs 500 crore. “How can Star 9 Mobility, which is months old, be eligible to buy Pawan Hans ?” said another tweet, which posted the networth requirements. It tagged Rama Rao.

Pawan Hans is also an approved maintenance centre of Eurocopter. It has its own fleet of 46 helicopters. It also operates and maintains five Dhruv helicopters belonging to BSF. The operating and maintenance standards of Pawan Hans are one of the highest in the world. Pawan Hans made a profit of Rs 242.7 crore in 2016-17 but went downhill since 2018-19, making losses of Rs 63.67 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 33.15 crore in 2019-20 but the stake was now sold for Rs 211 crore, the screen grabs said.

Opposition Congress too on Sunday said the Narendra Modi government’s sale of Pawan Hans was a fraud in the garb of divestment. It questioned the credentials of the consortium that got the bid. It also alleged under-pricing of the entity and termed the exercise ‘a tutorial on turning a PSU into a loss-making unit before sale’.

The consortium’s bid was cleared by Alternative Mechanism, which includes Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

The reserve price for the sale of this 51 per cent majority stake in Pawan Hans was fixed at Rs 199.92 crore. The other two bidders surprisingly quoted rates below the reserve price – Rs 181.05 crore and Rs 153.15 crore respectively. Star9 Mobility is a consortium of Big Charter, Maharaja Aviation and Almas Global Opportunity Fund SPC. The company does not have any helicopters of its own while Big Charter has three helicopters in its fleet. Maharaja Aviation’s Facebook account only flaunts photographs of Baba Ramdev. However, the relation of this company with Ramdev is not known. Almas Global Opportunity Fund SPC is set up under the jurisdiction of Cayman Islands and has no correlation or experience in this sector, Congress said about the deal.

Earlier, Pawan Hans employees’ union, which opposed the divestment, urged the government to merge Pawan Hans with State-owned ONGC, which holds 40 per cent stake or be made its subsidiary.

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