"We will see. They have to reach out to us with their concrete proposals. We'll look at it. If we find it worth supporting, we will certainly support," BJP leader Yashwant Sinha has said.
He was replying to a question whether BJP would support the government if it comes out with a proposal that goes upto 49 per cent Foreign Direct Investment in the insurance sector the way the BJP-led NDA government had proposed earlier.
"Well, you are asking me a hypothetical question. When I had discussed it earlier with the then Finance Minister, he agreed with us that it should be restricted to 26 per cent," Sinha told Karan Thapar in Devil's Advocate programme on CNN-IBN.
When asked if there is room for BJP to support the government if it goes upto 49 per cent in the way the BJP thought of 49 per cent, Sinha said, "they will have to reach out to us."
During the NDA regime, BJP had proposed to bring 49 per cent FDI in insurance if the balance of 23 per cent equity was given to NRIs, PIOs, OCBs, FIIs, but the Congress had opposed it then and demanded 26 per cent FDI instead.
Attacking the government, Sinha described the current economic situation in the country as "very serious", saying it is worse than it was in 1999" and squarely blamed outgoing Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and his predecessor P Chidambaram for it.
He also hit out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accusing him of being "dishonest" by trying to distance himself from the actions taken by the Finance Ministers in his Cabinet. MORE