 "Rahul Gandhi")
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the Centre's move to monetise its assets across key sectors, saying the Modi dispensation is selling India's "crown jewels" built in the last 70 years and "gifting" them to their 2-3 businessmen "friends".
Addressing a press conference here with former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, the former Congress chief said the BJP has claimed that nothing happened in India for 70 years, but now all assets created in all these years with public money are being sold.
Gandhi alleged that the Narendra Modi government's privatisation plan was aimed at creating monopolies in key sectors that will kill jobs, eliminate the informal sector and will destroy small businesses.
He said the BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly mishandled the economy that was built by the UPA government and is now resorting to selling the country's assets as a "last resort" to generate some money.
"The prime minister and the BJP used to say that the Congress party has done nothing in 70 years....Now, the prime minister is in the process of selling the crown jewels of this country," he told reporters.
"This entire privatisation, monetisation of assets is designed to create monopolies. The whole idea behind this exercise is to create monopoly for 3 or 4 people," he told reporters.
He alleged that the youth who are today searching for jobs will not find any as the small and medium industries have been destroyed, since the prime minister insists on building 2 or 3 monopolies that own everything in this country.
"This is not just a gifting of India's assets, this is going to ensure that the young people in India will not be able to find employment in the future," he said.
The former Congress chief said he had warned about coronavirus bringing a disaster but was ridiculed. He warned that this monetisation will ensure that the youth do not get jobs and that the entire industrial structure is controlled by 2 or 3 people.
"So as a youngster, it is your duty and my duty to fight this and to make people understand, what our prime minister is doing. The prime minister is not working for the people of India. The prime minister is working for 2 or 3 monopolies," he alleged.
The Congress leader listed out the assets that this government planned to sell out to its businessmen "friends", saying one can guess what is being sold to which monopolist.
He said the Congress party is not against privatisation, but there has to be a strategy and no strategic asset should be sold.
Chidambaram said that raising funds cannot be the sole aim for selling assets built over the last 70 years.
"They are indulging in, what I would call a grand bargain sell, a grand closing down sale," he said, adding, "This is all hatched in secrecy in this wonderful organisation call NITI Aayog."
The former Union minister said that all stakeholders, including employees, worker unions, farmers, must be consulted before embarking on such large sale of assets.
"This exercise has been designed without any ex-ante criteria. The government should have spelt out, what its criteria is and what its goals were. You don't embark upon such a big exercise without first setting out the criteria and what your goals are," he said.
Chidambaram said one does not embark on such an exercise without any consultation with stakeholders.
Taking a swipe at the government, he said, "I know that there are many magicians in this country but I ca''t imagine a greater magician in this government. I think this is a scandal."
Urging people to discuss and debate this monetisation plan, he said, "I think this is a dangerous slide and I wish the country wakes up to what these guys are up to."
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday unveiled an ambitious Rs 6 lakh crore National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) that included unlocking value by involving private companies across infrastructure sectors -- from passenger trains and railway stations to airports, roads and stadiums.
As many as 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports, including ones at Chennai, Bhopal, Varanasi and Vadodara, as well as 40 railway stations, 15 railway stadiums and an unidentified number of railway colonies have been identified for getting private investments.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
