Thursday, 02 September 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
Gourav Vallabh says that public assets worth Rs 6 lakh crore have been put on sale by BJP govt
Terming the recent National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) as a ‘clearance sale’ of strategic national assets of the country built arduously in the past seven decades, the spokesman of All India Congress Committee (AICC) Gourav Vallabh said that the Narendra Modi led BJP government has put public assets worth Rs six lakh core on sale just to benefit two persons. Addressing media persons at Congress headquarters here on Wednesday, Vallabh said that the Congress party would not let the government sell the country. He said that the Modi government has put 27,000 kms of highways, 6,000 MWs of power generation, 28,000 km of power transmission lines, 8,000 km of gas pipeline, 210 lakh metric ton of food grain storage, 2.86 lakh km of telecom fibre, 15,000 telecom towers, 25 airports, nine ports, 761 mining blocks, two national stadiums and assets worth 1.52 lakh crores of Indian railways on sale. He said that the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman is consistently claiming that the assets are not being sold but are being given on rent. However, the matter of fact is that these assets would come back to the government after a period of 30 to 50 years with a near zero value or much depreciated value, he asserted. The AICC spokesman said that PM Modi in three independent day speeches from the ramparts of Red Fort has announced to invest Rs 100 Lakh Crore on National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) but this project remains confined to speeches only. He said the money collected from monetisation would be invested on vanity projects like bullet train, Central Vista, construction of new residence of Prime Minister and purchase of new Aeroplane for PM.
Vallabh said that it is very disturbing that the government’s assets will not be available to the nation during the long lease period of 30 to 50 years and the private players would not provide reservations to poor, SC, ST and OBC in the PSU they would acquire. He added that it is an irony that the public assets would be handed over to the ‘friends’ who would take loans from the public sector banks ( which is the public money) and these ‘friends’ would again charge money from the public for using the monetised public assets. “This is the vicious cycle of plunder the Modi government is pushing the people into. The Congress party and the people of our country will not allow the Modi government to succeed in its misadventures,’’ he said.
On the question that it was the Congress party which started disinvestment and privatisation under Manmohan Singh, the Congress spokesperson said that the Congress- UPA had a specific policy under which only non strategic and loss-making PSUs were disinvested.
