End of an Era: Nagaon and Cachar Paper Mills to Go Under the Hammer on June 30

GUWAHATI: The two paper mills of Assam, Nagaon, and Cachar, under the Hindustan Paper Corporation, shall be e-auctioned as scrap on June 30.

As per a bidding notification, the action will be held on mtscecommerce.com. While the reserve price has been set at Rs 1,139 crore, the EMD amount has been set at Rs 55 crores, and the minimum incremental bid is Rs 1 crore.

Notably in the heydays, both the paper mills used to produce 2,00,000 tonnes of newsprint, however, since over the past 4 years due to the financial crunch, there were no salary and 87 employees died not getting proper medical treatment, in which four of them were forced to commit suicide.

The employees of the Nagaon Paper Mill and the Cachar Paper Mill, which closed in October 2015, have not received their salaries and other dues since February 2017 and December 2016 respectively. Both mills were owned by the Central government-controlled Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL) and were closed due to a shortage of working capital.

Earlier, a single private group had shown some interest as they would have monetized the massive land of the two paper mills as real estate besides bringing in new machinery to run the plants at a smaller capacity, but that too did not materialize.

Meanwhile, the Joint Action Committee for Registered Unions (JACRU) demanded immediate action on the revival of Nagaon and Cachar Paper Mills to restore sources of employments for lakhs of youths and release of all pending legitimate dues to the workers to save their lives as already 87 have died, including four suicides, during the previous tenure of the NDA-led government in Assam.

JACRU president and secretary, Manobenra Chakravarty and Ananda Bordoloi respectively expressed confidence in the dynamic leadership of Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma and desired fulfillment of the renewed commitments made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and declaration given through the Sankalpa Patra issued before the 2021 assembly elections.

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