Air India is not sold yet: The government said – no decision has been taken yet; Earlier there was a report that the bid of Tata Sons was approved

Posted on 1st Oct 2021 by rohit kumar

The government has rejected the news that the Tata Group's bid to buy Air India has been approved. The government has said that the media reports about this are wrong, nothing has been decided yet. Whenever there is some decision regarding this, information will be given to the media.

 

Earlier, a Bloomberg report claimed that the government has accepted Tata Sons' offer to buy Air India. The government had called a tender to sell the entire 100% stake in Air India. The government will also sell a 50% stake in Air India's second company Air India Sats (AISATS).

 

The committee that has been formed for Air India includes Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, and Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. According to sources, the reserve price of Air India was fixed at Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 crore.

 

According to a Bloomberg report, Tata Group had made a bid of about Rs 3,000 crore more than SpiceJet chairman Ajay Singh. The last date for bidding for Air India was September 15. Since then it was speculated that the Tata Group might buy Air India.

 

Mumbai office also included in the deal

 

Under this deal, Air India's head office in Mumbai and Airlines House in Delhi are also included. The market value of the Mumbai office is more than Rs 1,500 crore. At present, Air India controls 4,400 landing and parking slots in the country and 1,800 abroad.

 

The company is burdened with huge debt

 

The government failed in its plan to sell the huge debt-ridden Air India for many years. The government had invited bids in 2018 to sell a 76% stake. However, at that time the government had talked about keeping management control with itself. When no one showed interest in it, the government decided to sell it 100% with management control.

 

Efforts are being made to sell since the year 2000

 

The first decision to sell Air India was taken in the year 2000. This was the year when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government disinvested several companies, including the Centaur Hotel in Mumbai. Arun Shourie was the disinvestment minister at that time. On 27 May 2000, the government decided to sell a 40% stake in Air India.

 

Apart from this, the government had decided to give 10% share to employees and 10% to domestic financial institutions. After this, the government's stake in Air India would have come down to 40%. However, since then there have been several attempts to sell Air India for the last 21 years. But every time due to some reason or the other the matter got stuck.

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