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Soon after Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and P. Chidambaram characterised the asset monetisation announcement by the Government as a “sell out” and a “grand closing down sale” respectively, the BJP fielded Union Minister Smriti Irani to mount a counter-attack, attacking the Congress leaders for their “fake and highly misleading press conference.”
In a detailed statement, the BJP leader said Rahul Gandhi has only reflected "his political hypocrisy and bankruptcy” whereas the BJP Government has not just saved the country from the “thieves of the Congress” and brought the entire monetisation process in a transparent manner to fill coffers of the country.
She questioned the asset monetisation carried out by various Congress regimes in the past.
Read also: Congress blasts National Monetisation Pipeline
“When there was the Congress government in Maharashtra, they had done Rs 8,000 crore monetisation in the Mumbai-Pune Expressway project, so is Rahul Gandhi saying that the Congress Government in Maharashtra sold off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway to the private sector? Similarly in 2008 one RFP was floated for the New Delhi Railway Station when the Congress party government was in power at the Centre. Is Rahul Gandhi saying that the government in which the head of the government was his mother Sonia Gandhi was that government trying to sell off the country and its assets?” she asked.
She said it was the Congress that started the privatisation drive.
“In 2006 the privatisation drive of airports was started by the Congress led Union government which was headed by Sonia Gandhi, so is Rahul Gandhi implying that the Congress government sold off roads, railways and airports of the country?” she asked.
Irani said that the National Monetisation Pipeline very clearly states that the Government will continue to hold the ownership of all its assets. Apart from keeping the ownership rights of all the assets in the entire monetisation plan, the Government has also decided to ask the state governments to appoint its nodal officers for the entire monetisation process, she added.
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