CPI leaders have demanded that the UF steering committee meet immediately to discuss these issues of serious concern.
Party national secretaries M Farooqui and D Raja complained that the move to disinvest in public sector undertakings (PSUs), indiscriminate entry of foreign capital in the country, mostly in the consumer goods sector and attempts to amend the Patents Act are some of the issues on which the government has gone beyond the parameters of the CMP.
The main purpose of having a steering committee was that it will work as a monitoring body, but its meetings are being put off on one pretext or the other. The Prime Minister says he is busy with this election or that. Does he not hold cabinet meetings, lamented Farooqui.
The CPI has already conveyed its displeasure to the Prime Minister on the move to sell off part of the government holding in the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Oil India Corporation. CPI ministers are expected to raise the issue at the appropriate forum.
Raja said industry minister Murasoli Maran had promised at the last steering committee meet that he will bring out a note on disinvestment to gauge the views of the UF constituents.
We have been demanding that the note should be made available to us. It was never done. Now the government has already taken a decision. This goes against the spirit of the CMP, Raja added.
Murmurs can be heard in the party on recast of the core group on disinvestment announced by the government on Wednesday. The group, which was earlier headed by the finance secretary, has been put under the charge of the cabinet secretary. CPI general secretary A B Bardhan has already dispatched a letter to the Prime Minister, expressing his displeasure with the move to amend the Patents Act, 1970.
Referring to the statements of former secretary to the department of public enterprises R K Sinha and commerce secretary Tajendra Khanna on amending the Patents Act, Bardhan has said that the move was not in consonance with the CMP. He has demanded a clarification on the issue from the industry ministry.