The Intellectual Forum of Andhra University has appealed to President Ram Nath Kovind to prevail upon the Centre to reconsider its decision on privatisation of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) in the interest of the nation, in general, and Andhra Pradesh, in particular.
A roundtable was conducted, under the aegis of the D. Suvarna Raju, coordinator of the meeting, and a former Student’s Union leader of Andhra University, at TLN Sabha Hall here on Tuesday. The letter to the President was signed by 27 participants, including former Vice Chancellor of Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University Y. Satyanarayana and a former Professor of AU Chandu Subba Rao. Describing the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on January 27, 2021, on privatisation of VSP through 100% disinvestment as ‘Unconstitutional, arbitrary, malafide and undemocratic’, they noted that the Centre was doing 100% injustice to the State. Questioning the double standards of the Centre, they wondered why the Centre has invested ₹1,200 crore from public sector banks and ₹8,000 crore from ONGC, when the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation had become a sick unit. The government had also removed it from the list of insolvent industries, announced by the RBI. The corporate houses, which were the largest defaulters to banks, were given huge corporate tax exemptions, running into lakhs of crores of rupees. Their loans were written off by the government. They also alleged that the ‘strategic sale’ by the BJP government was aimed at handing over public assets to a few select industrialists.
Referring to the allotment of captive mines to private sector steel plants, while failing to extend the same benefit to the public sector VSP, they felt this discrimination by the successive governments was one of the reasons for the losses of VSP. The other being accumulated losses due to the long delay in the construction of the plant.
The signatories ridiculed that ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ does not mean transferring the wealth of the community into the hands of a few private entities, defying the socialist form of society as mandated by the Constitution, in its Preamble.
Copies of the letter were also marked to the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Chief Ministers of all States and Opposition leaders.
