SAIL ex-chief Roongta to head Vedanta's aluminium business

In a smart strategic move, Vedanta Resources has appointed former Steel Authority of India chairman Sushil Kumar Roongta as managing director of its aluminium business, including Vedanta Aluminium and Bharat Aluminium Co Ltd (BALCO). The appointment is with immediate effect.

Vedanta Resources, promoted by the abrasive Anil Agarwal, is listed in London, but the bulk of its operations are in India. However, several of its Indian projects have run into local and environmental problems.

The most prominent of these is Vedanta Aluminium's proposed mega-dollar bauxite mining and aluminium manufacturing project in the ecologically and ethnically sensitive Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa, which has been stymied by local and environmental protests.

No doubt, Vedanta hopes that Roongta, an old hand at state-owned SAIL (the country's largest steel producer), will help it work around the endless government red tape as well as other problems peculiar to India.

"Roongta will head the aluminium business of the group, including BALCO, comprising three million tonnes of fully integrated aluminium manufacturing facilities, together with 6,000 MW of captive power plants," Vedanta Resources said in a statement on Wednesday.
Roongta headed SAIL between August 2006 and May 2010.

Under his leadership, the 'Maharatna' (a ranking of state firms according to profitability) firm embarked on a major expansion plan to double capacity to over 26 million tonnes per annum by 2013-14.
 
An engineering graduate, he had worked with SAIL for 38 years in different capacities. He is regarded to have had a major hand in the transformation of SAIL into a Maharatna PSU.

After his retirement from SAIL, the government inducted Roongra on the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

On his appointment, Roongta said: "I am happy to be part of the Vedanta Group and looking forward to leading its aluminium business to be among the top integrated producers in the world."