National Monetisation Pipeline will take away reservations: Mallikarjun Kharge

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that the BJP government is only engaged in spreading falsehood and lies and are not doing anything good for the common man.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been asking, about what the Congress has done for the country in the past 70 years. We preserved democracy and Constitution in past seven decades. India had only five PSUs in 1951. Now, there are 366 PSUs. Is it not the work of Congress?" he asked.

National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), announced by the Modi government, will take away the reservations for scheduled classes, scheduled tribes and backward classes. The mixed economy concept of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru helped in creating 84 PSUs by 1969, which changed the course of development in modern India with creation of assets. But Modi government wants to blindly sell these assets instead of creating more assets for growth of the country, he alleged.

Read | People should rise against sale of PSU assets: Kharge

Coming down heavily on BJP’s support on NMP, he said the proposed national assets to be monetised were fetching a revenue of Rs 7 lakh crore for the government. Some units were incurring loss of Rs 37,000 crores. Giving some examples, he said selling off 26,700 km of roads for Rs 1.6 lakh crore, 400 rail stations and tracks for Rs 1.52 lakh crore, power transmission lines worth Rs 45,000 crore, will play havoc with the lower and middle classes as toll taxes, travel fares are bound to increase by many folds. Selling the PSUs, roads off to private players can weaken the national security and nation-building.

Kharge said Modi government has a track record of promoting select few corporate groups with close ties to BJP. Thus NMP will be used to boost prospects of these business houses, he added.

Modi government has been blaming UPA for bringing oil bonds and has been justifying the rise in price of petrol and diesel using oil bond payment issue. But in reality, oil bonds were initiated by Atal Bihari Vajpayee led NDA government during 1999 to 2004. The total payment of oil bonds is Rs 1.34 lakh crore, of which only Rs 3,500 crore was paid in the past seven years, he said.

The Leader of Opposition said that the Opposition had been insisting on a discussion on the Pegasus surveillance controversy in the Parliament. But the government was not ready to cooperate. Earlier, Kharge had visited Rajya Sabha member Oscar Fernandes, who is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Mangaluru.

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