Air India sale will be determined by market conditions: Modi
New Delhi, July 2: The actual strategic divestment of Air India will be determined by market conditions although the policy decision has already been in this regard, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said.
In an interview to Swarajya magazine, Modi said that the government's efforts to privatise the national carrier had faltered owing to the lack of response to the first sale offer.
"For Air India, the government has done what it had to with utmost sincerity. You have to differentiate between the lack of response to one sale offer and a policy decision.
At the cabinet level, we have cleared the sale of not only Air India but several other (loss making) public sector units - this itself is historical in many ways," he said.
"That they are yet to be sold is the result of timing and process. We don't want to make a sale where we will be accused of selling something for X amount when we could have got more. But the policy decisions for strategic sales have already been taken," he added.
Last month, the government said that a 76 per cent stake sale process of Air India has ended as "no interest" was shown by bidders, but it remains committed to the strategic divestment for which other alternatives will be evaluated.
"We ran a disinvestment process, where we made it very clear what type of bids we were interested in receiving... We asked certain type of bidders with certain bidding criteria to participate," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha told reporters here.
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Man arrested with Rs 2.54-crore heroin in Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Police have arrested a man and seized over 500 grams of heroin worth Rs 2.54 crore in the illicit market from him in Mumbai, officials said on Friday.
The police's Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) made the drug seizure in Santacruz in the western suburbs. The operation was conducted by the Kandivali unit of the ANC on Thursday as part of a special crackdown against drug trafficking in the area, they said.
Acting on specific inputs, an ANC team conducted a raid in Santacruz (East) and intercepted a man. During a search, the team recovered 508 grams of high-grade heroin from his possession, an official said.
The seized contraband, a highly addictive, opioid drug derived from morphine, is estimated to be worth Rs 2.54 crore in the international market, he informed.
Following the seizure, a case was registered against the man under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and he was formally placed under arrest in the early hours of Friday.
The police are currently investigating the source of the drug and trying to identify the intended recipients of the consignment, he said.
