Tata Chemicals, leading manufacturer of caustic soda and fertilisers in the country, said today that it had bought a 35 per cent stake in JOil Pte, a Singapore-based jatropha seedling company. The stake buy will help the firm gain exclusive marketing rights for technology to develop the best seed varieties of the plant, which yields biodiesel.

It is not often that an issue approved by the Cabinet, after having been vetted by a group of ministers (GoM), is sent back to the GoM for review. But such has been the fate, for understandable reasons, of the national policy on bio-fuels which was formally okayed by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in September.