Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that the refinery will remain as the public sector institution and that it has asked the Centre to increase its stake in NRL to 26%.

Sarmasaid that the state government has urged the Centre to increase the share ofNRL up to 26 percent. "During the establishment of NRL, the share of OIL was 26percent but during the rule of the Congress government, the share was decreasedto 14 percent," said Sarma while addressing the media persons at Dispur today.

"TheCenter included BCPL in the public sector recently and we proposed to purchasethe sold share as the state government would be in benefit if it could buy the26 percent share," said Sarma.

Hesaid that the amount of profit would increase adding that the state will haveto give 1500 crore to buy the original shares.