Centre asks Kerala, Rajasthan to take over Instrumentation units

The Centre is looking at ways to "untangle" the business of Instrumentation Limited and has requested the Kerala and Rajasthan governments to take over the company's units located at Palakkad and Kota respectively.

While the Kota unit of Instrumentation Limited has been in the red since many years, the Palakkad unit has been making profits. "We have requested the Chief Ministers of Rajasthan and Kerala to consider taking over these respective units. While we have a positive response from Kerala, the initial response from Rajasthan is negative. "We may approach the Cabinet with a proposal for state government to take over the Kerala unit. If the Rajasthan government refuses then we have to take a call on the further continuance of the Kota unit. We may decide to close IL, Kota and hand over IL, Palakkad unit to the state government," a senior official in the Department of Heavy Industry said.

Employees of the Palakkad unit have been demanding that the government should either delink the profit-making unit from its loss-making mother unit at Kota in Rajasthan or merged with a profit-making PSU. The government last month had approved hiving off profit-making Rajasthan Electronics and Instruments Limited (REIL) from its parent company Instrumentation Ltd and turning it into an independent central public sector enterprise (CPSE) under the Department of Heavy Industry.