KTR Slams Centre For Privatisation Of Vizag Steel Plant

BRS working president and Telangana IT minister K T Rama Rao today lashed out at the union government for "trying to privatise" the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) in Andhra Pradesh, and said that his party would soon launch an agitation over that.

Writing an open letter to the union government opposing its move to disinvest in RINL (the parent of the VSP), Rao requested the Centre to instead release Rs 5,000 crore to the plant, and said that the VSP had repaid the loans extended by the P V Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee governments, with interest, in the past.

He also asked the union government to extend support to the plant by purchasing its products, and to examine the possibilities of merging the VSP with the Steel Authority of India Limited.

Claiming that the BJP government had waived off corporate loans worth Rs 12.5 lakh crore, KTR asked why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not compassionate towards the VSP.

The minister also said that the Expression of Interest issued by the VSP management and the proposed agreement lacked specific regulations. This was nothing but a ploy to hand over the VSP to private companies in the guise of pooling in revenues for working capital and raw material, he said, and alleged that the union government basically wanted to hand over the VSP, which was valued at Rs 1.5 lakh crore, at petty values to private companies.

Safeguarding the interests of the VSP was the responsibility of the people of both the Telugu States, and the BRS strongly condemned any attempts at privatising the plant, KTR said. He vowed that the BRS would extend solidarity with the employees' unions who were opposing the disinvestment move, and directed the BRS' AP unit chief Thota Chandrashekhar to extend unconditional support to the VSP workers' unions.

In a general call to all the workers' unions in different Public Sector Undertakings (PSU), Rao appealed to them to join hands with the BRS in fighting against the Modi government's "conspiracies" to sell the PSUs for the benefit of a few corporate giants.