Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday came down heavily upon the Central government over its infrastructure monetisation plan, saying that the ruling dispensation is in the process of selling “India’s crown jewels built by previous govternments with public money over 70 years”.
Addressing a media briefing, Gandhi alleged that the Narendra Modi government wants to benefit its few industrialist friends through the National Monetisation Pipeline.
“BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi say nothing happened in India in the last 70 years, but now all assets created in the last 70 years are being sold,” Gandhi said.
The Congress leader alleged that Centre’s privatisation plan aimed at creating monopolies in key sectors and that will kill jobs.
“We are not against privatisation but our privatisation plan had a logic. We didn’t privatise strategic industries and we consider Railways as strategic industry because it transports lakhs and crores of people and also employs lots of people,” Gandhi said.
“We privatised chronically loss-making industries. We privatised the companies that had minimal market share. We didn’t privatise government enterprises with the potential of checking private sector monopoly in a particular sector,” he added
The Cogress leader also accused the Centre of indulging in creation of monopolies in formal sector and elimination of informal sector.
“There is an excuse they have come up with that “we are leasing these”…The government clearly mishandled the economy and doesn’t know what to do. They have basically destroyed what the UPA built and now as a last resort, they are selling everything that we had helped create. To me, this is a huge tragedy,” he said.
Earlier today, the Congress termed the government’s infrastructure monetisation plan as “legalised loot and organised plunder”, alleging that invaluable public assets created over decades are being handed over to a chosen few.
The government is giving away assets worth crores made from the hard work of the people to its billionaire “friends”, the Congress further alleged.
Centre’s NMP plan
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) on Monday that included unlocking value by involving private companies across infrastructure sectors — from passenger trains and railway stations to airports, roads and stadiums.
A total of 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports, including the 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.
Asserting that there is no transfer of ownership or land, Sitharaman said, “The NMP talks about brownfield infra assets where investments have already been made, where there is a completed asset which is either languishing or which is remaining not fully monetised or which is remaining underutilised.”
