‘It is akin to selling the family silver’
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-affiliated trade union, was opposed to the Union government’s plan to monetise assets worth ₹6 lakh crore over four years and was planning to protest the same, BMS general secretary Binoy Kumar Sinha said on Wednesday.
Mr. Sinha told The Hindu that the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday was akin to “selling the family silver”.
“We understand that the government needs funds, but this is not the way. They should come up with an alternative plan. We are considering our next course of action, including protests,” Mr. Sinha said.
He said the union’s planned agitation against privatisation in September would now include protests against the NMP.
The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) also came out against the plan on Tuesday, terming it the government’s design for “loot of national assets”.
“The NMP is a pipeline of corruption while handing over public assets to private hands. It is a project of destroying the national economy and bringing untold miseries to the workers and other sections of the toiling people,” CITU general secretary Tapan Sen said in a statement.
He added that the plan would not augment the country’s infrastructure as claimed by Ms. Sitharaman and the NITI Aayog, but would rather give corporates a chance to earn large revenues without investing capital.
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