Samata Party follows its Boss: slams disinvestment

Talking to reporters here, party spokesman Shambhu Srivastava said that the speed with which disinvestment was being carried out had given rise to apprehensions among the public and cited the instance of the sale of Centaur Hotel.

The hotel, he said, had been sold in February this year for Rs 83 crore to a private company which resold it to another company for a profit of Rs 32 crore. Such instances were bound to give rise to misgivings, he said.

Srivastava also referred to the strategic sale of IPCL, saying the government’s own guidelines were not adhered to in this case by allowing the Reliance group to bid for it even after the company had been charged with violation of the Official Secrets Act. On the other hand, the Hindujas were not allowed to bid for VSNL because of their involvement in the Bofors gun deal, he said.

Reacting to the Samata’s criticism, BJP spokesman Arun Jaitley denied that any wrongs were committed in the disinvestment procedure, which could not be faulted because share values were determined by market forces.

Fluctuation in share values were not specific to Centaur Hotel, he said, pointing out that the value of VSNL shares had gone down after disinvestment while in the case of CMC they had gone up five times.