Anil toes Sarin, works ministries

It was the turn of Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani to repeat what Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin had done just a day before.

Ambani spent most of Thursday in the capital, meeting finance minister P Chidambaram, communications minister Dayanidhi Maran, and department of the telecommunications (DoT) secretary D S Mathur.

This is even as the company began due-diligence of Hutch Essar on Thursday.

It is believed that Ambani’s meetings with the government representatives were not planned much in advance.

The buzz was that Ambani may have discussed the issue of the proposed Hutch Essar deal with the ministers and the DoT secretary, though the official line was that “he made courtesy calls”.

Just a day earlier, Vodafone’s Sarin had a back-to-back schedule with three ministers — Chidambaram and Maran, and commerce & industry minister Kamal Nath on Wednesday.

Even Essar chairman Shashi Ruia had separately met Chidambaram and Maran on Wednesday.

Vodafone was the first one to start the due diligence process earlier this week, ahead of placing a formal bid for acquiring Hutch Essar, the fourth largest telecom operation in the country.

Essar, which holds 33% in Hutch Essar, is learnt to have begun due-diligence on Wednesday. The Hinduja group is expected to do follow suit early next week.

Although there’s no formal bidding process, all interested players are expected to place their formal bids for Hutch Essar within weeks, a source said.