MTNL has approved the sale of its Powai property in Mumbai to the Income Tax Department for ₹891.53 crore, giving the financially stressed state-owned telecom company another route to monetise its non-core assets and meet its large debt obligations.
The company’s board approved the transaction on Thursday, according to a BSE filing cited by Business Standard. The property is located at Plot-C, Technology Street, Powai, and covers 20,895.60 square metres of land.
The transfer will be completed either through a government-to-government arrangement or by direct sale. MTNL said the transaction is subject to formal acceptance by the Income Tax Department and is based on Presidential Approval and Alternative Mechanism approval.
The proposed sale places a substantial public-sector land parcel within the government’s broader effort to use asset monetisation to support MTNL’s finances. The company has continued to face losses and a high liability burden while its operational income has declined.
Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha in July that MTNL’s total liabilities were around ₹40,008.52 crore in FY26. He also said the company’s non-core assets were valued at approximately ₹50,000 crore, indicating the scale of the asset base being considered as part of the financial support strategy.
MTNL’s losses rose to around ₹3,101 crore in FY26 from ₹2,616 crore in FY22, while its total income fell to ₹1,469 crore from ₹1,696 crore over the same period, according to the figures cited in the parliamentary reply. The numbers highlight the gap between the value of the company’s physical assets and its declining operating performance.
The Powai transaction also illustrates how government-owned land and buildings are being treated as financial resources as public-sector entities manage legacy liabilities. In Mumbai, where large land parcels are scarce and development pressures are high, transfers involving government-owned property can have significance beyond the balance sheet, although the supplied information does not specify the future use planned by the Income Tax Department.
The sale follows other asset-monetisation measures aimed at reducing MTNL’s dependence on government support. An Economic Times report cited by Business Standard said MTNL had begun servicing some interest on its ₹24,071 crore outstanding sovereign guarantee bonds from its own funds after monetising assets.
The Powai sale is not yet complete. Its next formal steps are the Income Tax Department’s acceptance of the transaction and completion through the approved government-to-government or direct-sale mechanism.
