Adani Group acquires 97% stake in Kattupalli Port
New Delhi, June 28: Adani Ports on Thursday acquired 97 per cent stake in Marine Infrastructure Developer Pvt Ltd (MIDPL), the developer and operator of Kattupalli Port near Chennai.
Adani Ports, India's largest port developer and part of the Adani Group, said in a statement that it executed share purchase agreement with Larsen and Toubro (L&T) and MIDPL to acquire the stake.
Located 30 km towards north of Chennai, the Kattupalli Port is one of the most modern ports in the country which provides connectivity with hinterland of north Tamil Nadu, Chennai, the Bengaluru region and south Andhra Pradesh.
Karan Adani, CEO of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, said the Tamil Nadu government and the Commerce Ministry gave approvals for the acquisition in record time and his firm was committed to make Kattupalli port one of the largest ports in southern India.
"We are going to start our construction to diversify the cargo of the port and will be adding 40 MMT (million metric ton) of new capacity in next three years," he said.
The company said in a statement that it plans to transform the port into a multi commodity port to handle cargo like containers, automobiles, break bulk, general cargo, liquid cargo and project cargo.
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Ex-minister Ramanath Rai hits out at BJP leader Ashoka for ‘irresponsible’ comments on KC Venugopal
Mangaluru: Congress leader and former minister B Ramanath Rai slammed BJP leader R Ashoka for calling AICC General Secretary KC Venugopal an agent of the party high command, and asked if the general secretary and other office-bearers in the BJP were commission agents too.
Rai, who addressed a press meet at the Congress office in the city on Friday, expressed fury over the recent comments of the BJP leader that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was presenting himself in a shameless manner in public life. Ashoka, who is also Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly, had said that the Congress government had ‘broken every previous record on corruption-related controversies’.
“Ashoka has spoken with sheer ignorance and displays his lack of maturity, as he often does while facing the media. KC Venugopal has been working at organization of the party and it is unbecoming of Ashoka to criticize Venugopal as he did,” Rai told reporters.
“Being in a responsible position, how acceptable is it for Ashoka to pass disrespectful, random comments about another leader who also holds a responsible position? If KC Venugopal is indeed an agent of the party high command, what should we consider BJP leaders to be? Are they brokers?” he asked
Commenting on Ashoka’s allegations of corruption in the Congress government in Karnataka, Rai pointed out, “The KSRTC land was sold to private parties when he (Ashoka) was transport minister. We can find several such cases across the state, which need to be probed.”
The former minister, however, refused to comment on the incident that occurred at Mangaluru airport during CM Siddaramaiah’s visit to the city recently.
Former mayors Ashraf and Shashidhar Hegde, Congress activists Vishwas Kumar Das, Subhodaya Alva, Shabeer, Baby Kundar, Padmanabha, Nazeer Bajal and Prem were present.
