The following is the statement issued by the Centre for Indian Trade Unions on February 5:

AS per a report in one of the leading national English dailies, The Hindu dated February 5, 2016, the government of India is planning to go in for strategic sale of some of India's most efficient and highly profitable public sector undertakings (PSUs). It is also planning aggressive disinvestment of shares in other PSUs. This obviously is meant to hand over our country’s basic economic strength at cheap rates when the stock market is depressed, thus benefiting the global players. Even if partially true, these measures will be disastrous for national interests and the interests of the people.

The globally competitive engineering giant BHEL, the profitable oil PSUs like ONGC, HPCL, BPCL, IOC, the Defence sector PSUs like BEML, HAL etc have been initially short listed for the strategic sale as per the report. This is tantamount to putting the country on sale, reflecting the desperate economic condition in the country, despite the high sounding claims of the government. The patriotic people of our country cannot tolerate this disastrous game of the BJP government at the centre.

CITU strongly condemns the very idea of such a sale of the country's blue chip PSUs that are contributing handsomely to national exchequer besides making capital investments in the national economy out of their own resources.

India cannot be allowed to put on sale. CITU urges upon the government to desist from such disastrous exercise. CITU calls upon the working people and the trade unions irrespective of affiliations to launch immediate protest against such moves at each work place and also through sending fax/ emails to union finance minister and the prime minister demanding ‘Stop disinvestment in PSUs; No to strategic sale’.