Birla offers to hand over Vi stake to govt

Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla has offered to transfer the group’s entire ownership in Vodafone Idea Ltd to the government in a last-ditch effort to keep the cash-strapped telco from collapsing.

In a letter to cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba in June, Birla expressed the group’s inability to fund the company any further.

“It is with a sense of duty towards the 270 million Indians connected by Vodafone Idea, I am more than willing to hand over my stake in the company to any entity—public sector/government /domestic financial entity or any other that the government may consider worthy of keeping the company as a going concern,” Birla said in the letter, parts of which were reviewed by Mint.