Billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Group has offered Rs 17,000 crore ($3.4 billion) to buy the government’s remaining stakes in Hindustan Zinc Ltd and Bharat Aluminium Co, a ministry official said.

A panel of bureaucrats from ministries, including law, corporate affairs, finance and mining, met yesterday and decided to seek the advice of a group of ministers on the proposal, Vishwapati Trivedi, secretary at the ministry of mines, told reporters in New Delhi.