Vajpayee Govt Selling PSUs

Date: 
Friday, June 23, 2000

Press Statement

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) condemns the retrograde decision of the Vajpayee government for selling out the PSUs as manifested by the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD). The CCD has reportedly cleared as many as 20 important PSUs for sale of majority stake to strategic buyers and the sale of 10 more PSUs has been approved in principle. As stated by the Minister for Disinvestment, Mr. Arun Jaitley, the disinvestment process in all those cases would be completed by the end of the current financial year.

It is shocking that the government of the day has become desperate in frittering away the national wealth on a platter to the MNCs in particular. The haste being demonstrated by the government to complete the sell-out by the year end is a deliberate message to the advantage of the prospective global buyers in picking up Indian PSUs along with their huge assets at a depressed price. The public sector units targetted for sell-out by the year-end include number of profit making PSUs and many others of strategic importance to the national economy, with huge assets at their disposal.

The much speculated and propagated dissent to sale of PSUs by some ministers in the NDA government has probed to be a damp squib. For all of them, securing their seats in the NDA government is more important than national interests.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) considers this move by the Vajpayee government as totally anti-national and in the interests of the imperialist lobby and calls upon all the patriotic people to unitedly resist such dangerous and desperate game-plans of the government.