Chief minister Madhu Koda meets Union minister of state for heavy industries Raghunath Jha. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, April 27: The state government today expressed its inability to the Union minister of state for heavy industries, Raghunath Jha, to grant an advance of Rs 200 crore to Heavy Engineering Corporation Limited, Ranchi, to help meet its working capital requirement.

At a meeting held with chief minister Madhu Koda today, which was attended by chief secretary A.K. Basu, principal secretary Sukhdeo Singh and HEC chairman-cum-managing director G.K. Pillai, Jha made a formal request to grant an advance of Rs 200 crore to the corporation to meet its working capital requirement.

An HEC revival package which was cleared by the state government last December, provided for a transfer of some 1,100 acres of vacant HEC land to the state in lieu of writing off of energy, sales tax and other dues along with a cash grant of Rs 250 crore.

The package has since been forwarded by the state government to the Centre for its final assent.

Jha pointed out that since clearing the HEC package — which was under active consideration by the Centre — might take some time, HEC urgently needed working capital to execute the growing job orders valued at over Rs 3,000 crore from SAIL, defence establishments, Isro and other sources.

Jha requested the chief minister to grant an advance of Rs 200 crore to help it execute its standing orders as well as to clear the pending 1992-1996 wage arrears pertaining to already retired employees.

Though Koda agreed to examine the request, he said that the state government may not be in a position to accede to the HEC request at the moment.

However, he said that the state government would consider paying HEC an amount equivalent to the present value of the HEC buildings which the state government has taken over to set up its state secretariat and other offices, state Assembly and for providing residential housing accommodation to its officials.

Following the rebuff, Jha scaled down his demand to request that the state government consider paying at least Rs 100 crore to the corporation in view of the urgency of the situation.

Though no final word was given, the chief minister agreed to look into the matter “very positively”.