Congress cautions government over disinvestment method

New Delhi, July 24 (IANS) The Congress Thursday cautioned the government over the process it will adopt to meet its disinvestment targets, saying the record of the previous NDA government had left people with "deep dissatisfaction".

Congress spokesperson Rajeev Gowda told reporters here it was not yet clear how the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government will meet its disinvestment target.

"When you look at disinvestment and the NDA, when you juxtapose those two phases together, lot of questions arise. The track record of the NDA government in its previous time in office... we had raised lot of questions and is a matter which left most of us with deep dissatisfaction," he said.

Gowda said there were instances during the previous National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government when "multiple hotels were sold".

He said one could sell shares to the public and make people stakeholders in essentially a government owned company or one could sell out the company altogether.

"During the NDA years, they focused on outright sale... that philosophy may recur again. When an outright sale was done, in most instances, there were lot of questions about under-valuation, there were questions about sweet-heart deal and there were questions about negligence in terms of assets of the companies," he said.

Gowda said the Congress was not against disinvestment as a policy but was concerned about the process and methods that were adopted.

"We are only urging tremendous scrutiny, tremendous vigilance to make sure that Indian assets do not get sold at an under-valuation," he said.