NTC to sell mill land via e-auction

The National Textiles Corporation (NTC) said it has done away with the system of inviting tenders for selling lands of its closed mills and adopted the 'e-auction' route, which is more transparent.

"Resorting to e-auction would add transparency to the entire sale process and is expected to put a full stop to all misgivings normally associated with the sale of properties," the state-owned firm NTC said in a statement.

The NTC has issued advertisements for e-auction for the sale of land of Bharat Textile Mills and Poddar Textile Mills, both in Mumbai, it said. For the sale of Bharat Textiles Mills, the firm had first issued a tender notice but later on canceled it and announced the land would be sold through e-auction or online route.

NTC has nine mills situated in prime locations of the country's financial capital, including Prabhadevi, Worli and Lower Parel.

The company originally had 119 mills, out of which 77 were closed under the Industrial Disputes Act. Two have been handed over to the Pondicherry government and five are being revived through joint ventures with Pantaloons, Alok Industries and Bhaskar Industries.