The union finance minister P Chidambaram is under pressure to announce major relief to the SSI units on the MRP based excise issue in the Union budget on Monday, thanks to the relentless pressure from various quarters, feel industry sources.

Though the SSIs do not expect a rollback of the decision as they demand, the major announcement to appease the SSI units could be in the form of increasing the turnover limit from Rs 1 crore to Rs 3 crore and reducing the excise duty to 8 per cent as recommended by the top officials of the departments concerned. Disappointing them, an abatement increase of 5 per cent from 35 per cent to 40 per cent was announced this week.

The SSIs leaders say that they would wait for the budget and would step up the pressure to roll back the notification, if the budget disappoints them, and claims to have got assurance from many of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition partners to support them and fight against closure of numerous SSI units.

Last week, A B Bardhan, the Communist Party of India (CPI) general secretary is learnt to have led a delegation of the Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industries (CIPI-ssi) to the union finance minister, to explain the issue. According to T S Jaishankar, chairman, CIPI, the CPI leader was so aggressive to make it clear to the finance minister that the left parties would not entertain any decision detrimental to the interests of the SSI pharma industries and liable to cause thousands unemployed in the country. After a closed meeting with the FM, Bardwan conveyed to the CIPI leaders that the finance minister has assured to consider the demands of SSIs.

CIPI claims at least 20 MPs are convinced of the consequences of MRP based excise, and are likely to make it an issue in the current budget session of Parliament.

As Pharmabiz reported earlier, the Chief Minister of Punjab is known to have written to union finance minister on the necessity to have a re-look at the notification. Similar views have been aired by many State Governments, like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The UPA convenor Sonia Gandhi wrote a personal letter to the CIPI office bearers, explaining she would direct the FM to look into the matter. Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee also informed CIPI that he would ask Chidambaram to table details of the MRP based issue in the Parliament.

SSI sources hope such pressure tactics would convince the FM to come up with favourable announcement in the budget.