from neighbouring states. The chapter of its industrialization started when it was selected as best option for a fertilizer factory due to its apt geographical conditions in the year 1944 by the Viceroy's Executive Council following recommendations submitted in November 1944 by a three members technical mission consisting of G S Gowing and J Rigg, both of Imperial Chemical Industries and T H Riley of the Association of British Chemical Plants Manufacturers, Britain for setting up a single large fertilizer factory to produce 3,50,000 tons Ammonium Sulphate per annum with Gypsum as raw material. A separate project organisation was set by the Government of India in 1945 under the Chief Technical Advisor, Brig. M H Cox. To end the system of diarchy and to replace the same with one of autonomy, a company named Sindri Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited was formed under the Companies Act, which came into being in December 1951 as the first Public Sector Company, wholly owned and governed by the Government of India. The production of Ammonium Sulphate in the factory was started on 31 October 1951 and the factory inaugurated in March 1952. In his inauguration speech, the then Prime Minister of India, Jawahar Lal Nehru said that he was not just inaugurating a fertilizer factory but he was inaugurating a temple of modern India. The Company Sindri Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited was merged in January 1961 with another fertilizer manufacturing company Hindustan Chemical and Fertilizers Limited floated by the Government of India in July 1959 to form a bigger Company the Fertilizer Corporation of India Limited. The factory was first in India to produce Ammonium Sulphate (1951), Urea (1959), Ammonium Nitrate-Sulphate, commonly called the Double salt (1959) and was the first fertilizer factory to have its own captive power plant in 1951 and to introduce planning, research and development facilities in 1951. The raw materials used initially for its final products were gypsum, coal and naptha. A number of new plants were added to the factory as need arose time to time. A rationalization scheme was completed in 1976 and a modernization project was commissioned in 1979 with product-mix of ammonia, urea, nitric acid, ammonium nitrate and ammonium bicarbonate with low-sulphur heavy stock/furnace oil and coal as basic raw materials. In 1978, the Government of India decided to reorganise the Fertilizer Corporation of India Limited and the National Fertilizer Corporation Limited, which was incorporated