Andhra Pradesh government, which has been blaming the Narendra Modi government at the Centre for not sanctioning the steel plant at Kadapa, has claimed to have found a foreign investor to set up the same.
Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board authorities announced that a popular steel major has come forward to set up an integrated steel plant at Kadapa at a cost of Rs 17,000 crore.
Representatives of the company came down to Amaravati to have talks with chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the APEDB to finalise the deal.
However, they refused to divulge the name of the company immediately, on the pretext that the company authorities wanted the entire deal to remain a secret till the agreement is signed.
This has given rise to suspicion as to whether there were any underhand dealings in the whole exercise.
Normally, Naidu does not want to lose any opportunity to gain the mileage in announcing such products.
Especially since the Centre is creating hurdles in the steel plant issue, he would have got a bigger mileage had he announced the name of the company, if it is such a big company.
In the past, there was a proposal for setting up of the steel plant at Kadapa by Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) along with Arcelor-Mittal S.A. as a joint venture.
The project involved the construction of processing units, a warehouse, a blast furnace and related infrastructure, and the installation of equipment and machinery at a cost of US $ 2,320 million (Rs 16,263 crore).
Metallurgical and Engineering Consultants (India) Limited (MECON), which is a PSU under the Ministry of Steel was appointed to conduct the feasibility study. In November 2017, Mecon submitted the study report to the union ministry of steel.
It is not exactly known whether it is the same Arcellor-Mittal company or something else that has come forward to set up the steel plant now.