Naik smirks as Opposition takes on Shourie for him

Listening patiently to the debate, Shourie intervened after about an hour saying, ‘I have no problems in listening to the Opposition members on the disinvestment issue for as long as they want but I want them to be present when I reply and not stage a walk-out.’ Following this it was decided by Opposition members and Shourie that the reply could be made at a later date, maybe Monday next.

Opposition members cutting across party lines, dubbed the disinvestment policy of the government as ‘mindless’ meant just to meet the budget deficit that for any strategic reasons.

Munshi said the Congress had initiated the privatisation process in the country at a time when the country’s finances were in a dismal shape, he said his party never stood for divestment of profit-making PSUs and sought to know why oil PSUs were being divested.

He said that public sector oil companies which had taken profits from about Rs 30 crore in the 1980s to the present level of Rs 24,000 crore cannot be punished for their efforts.

He called upon the government to consider putting oil PSUs in the same list of strategic areas like defence and atomic energy where disinvestment was not being allowed.

Veteran CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee hit out at the government for not even having a parliamentary consultative committee attached to the ministry of disinvestment which could have made the ministry accountable to the Parliament.

First-time Congress MP, Jyotiraditya Scindia, also called the disinvestment process as a means to bridge the budget deficit. And to conclude on a winning note, Scindia ended his speech quoting Shourie’s father, H. D. Shourie, who had said, ‘privatise but wisely. For each enterprise the requirements will need to be determined in the light of its level of efficiency, field of competition and its social obligations for exploring all possibilities of improvement or divestiture.’