Assets created in last 70 years being sold: Rahul on National Monetisation Pipeline

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday questioned the move of the government to monetise its assets across key sectors, saying all assets created in the last 70 years are being sold.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi with former Union finance minister P Chidambaram, he said the BJP has claimed that nothing happened in India for 70 years, but now all assets created in all these years are being sold.

"What this country has built over the last 70 years, is being given away. There is an excuse they have come up with that "we are leasing these"...The government clearly mishandled the economy & doesn't know what to do," he said.

Assailing the government, Rahul Gandhi said, "I want to tell the youths, your employment has been snatched, for farmers, three special farm laws have been made. And today I want to say what Prime Minister plans to give to his industrialist friends."

This, he claimed, comprises 26,700 km of national highways worth Rs 1.6 lakh crore, Rs 1.5 lakh crore in railways with 400 railways stations, 150 private trains, railway tracks and warehouses. He further said that 42,300 circuit km of transmission network, 6,000 MW power generation, solar wind assets from NHPC, NTPC and NLC, and 8,000 km of national gas pipeline of GAIL are all going to be privatised.

Even the 4,000 km of petroleum pipeline, 2.8 lakh km of telecom assets of Bharat Net Fibre Netowrk, BSNL and MTNL towers, warehouses worth Rs 29,000 crore with a stroage space of 210 lakh metric tonne, 107 coal mines, 761 mineral blocks, 25 airports worth Rs 21,000 crore, ports worth Rs 13,000 crore along with 31 projects, and two national stadium worth Rs 11,000 are going to be gifted to few industrialists, he said.

Rahul Gandhi alleged that the Modi government's privatisation plan was aimed at creating monopolies in key sectors which will kill jobs. He said that the previous UPA government was not against privatisation. But the privatisation it did was based on logic and study.

"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," he said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday unveiled an ambitious Rs 6 lakh crore National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) that included unlocking value by involving private companies across infrastructure sectors -- from passenger trains and railway stations to airports, roads and stadiums.

As many as 25 Airports Authority of India (AAI) airports, including 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.

With agencies inputs