The Hindu Business Line : ITI to call for interest from strategic partners

Bangalore, Sept. 30 Telecom PSU ITI Ltd will shortly issue the notification calling for expressions of interest from potential joint venture partners for three of its plants, the Chairman and Managing Director, Mr S.K. Chatterjee, said at the AGM on Wednesday.

The Central Government has proposed to divest part of ITI’s stake in the units at Rae Bareli (Wimax modems and CPE plant); Naini (GPON and GEPON plant); and Bangalore (IP core systems). ITI is expected to keep minority stake in all of them – leaving the selected partner with a stake between 51 and 74 per cent.

Mr Chatterjee said, “The manpower from [ITI plants] would be suitably employed in the joint companies if they so desire.” Many telecom MNCs, including Alcatel and Huawei, have been mentioned as being interested parties.

The Rs 1,740-crore company awaited the recommendations of the consultant, Darashaw & Co., on allocating land and infrastructure to the prospective joint entities.

Id cards project

Meanwhile ITI, along with BEL and ECIL, has begun work on a pilot to develop smart ID cards for 33 million people, mostly fisherfolk, in the four southern States, according to the company’s Director Production, Mr Ravi Agarwal.

ITI will produce the biometric ID cards for nearly 10 million people in Kerala and Pondicherry; BEL in Karnataka and ECIL in Tamil Nadu. The project initiated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and supervised by the Registrar General of India is to be completed by March 2010, Mr Agarwal told Business Line on Wednesday.

ITI, which launched its part of the work in August, will make the cards at its Palakkad facility besides related work such as collecting and hosting data. The three PSUs were working out the cost of the project, he said.

The pilot was expected to be integrated into the ambitious UID (unique ID) cards project of the Ministry of Home Affairs. For the loss-making company, “This is surely one of the major turn-around projects and we plan to take it up in a big way in at least two plants,” Mr Agarwal said.

ITI earlier worked on the MNIC (Multi-purpose National ID Cards) along with BEL a couple of years ago.

Mr Chatterjee said data centres could be set up at other locations depending on the growth in this business at the centre opened recently in Bangalore.

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