Amid an ongoing tussle with its workers at Manesar facility, Maruti Suzuki India today said it may start operations of the second plant in the unit within next two days, thereby advancing it by almost a month.

The facility is currently facing a labour dispute with the management preventing workers of the first plant from entering the complex without signing a 'good conduct bond' following allegations of "sabotage" and deliberate quality compromise on cars produced last week.

"Maruti Suzuki may commence operations at its second Manesar plant in a day or two. The company's engineers are working practically 24x7 to bring the second plant on stream.

The second plant was planned to be commissioned by late September," Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said in a statement. The second plant at Manesar has been set up with an investment of nearly Rs 1,700 crore, it added.

"Since the company is short of manpower at this stage, starting operations at this second plant will be a shot in the arm for the company," MSI said.

With no solution in sight to the ongoing stalemate between the management and workers, the company is hiring contract workers to run its operations.

"Today, Maruti Suzuki further strengthened the production activities at the Manesar plant as it hired more skilled and experienced people yesterday. A fresh batch of 180 experienced and ITI trained workers joined the production activities this morning," the firm said.

Yesterday, the company had brought in 120 ITI trained workers to the Manesar facility. In addition, it has already deployed 50 engineers from the company's Gurgaon plant and around 290 supervisors for production activities at the plant.

"In all, the company now has 680 trained and experienced people available for production. All these people are being deployed to start and scale up production at the plant," the statement said.

The company will continue the recruitment drive for trained workers to normalise production in coming days, it added.

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