The Hindu : BJP sticks to its guns on VSNL-Tata deal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 06, 2002

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BJP sticks to its guns on VSNL-Tata deal

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JUNE 5. The Bharatiya Janata Party today stuck to its position on the VSNL-Tata disinvestment deal, pointing out that its statement of June 3 had basically criticised the VSNL board decision to allow Rs. 1200 crores of its funds to be invested in Tata Teleservices. And the two Ministers involved in the spat _ The Disinvestment Minister, Arun Shourie, and the Communications Minister, Pramod Mahajan, met the Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, separately as the party tired to restore its internal differences.

``The matter ends, I have nothing more to say,'' the party general secretary and spokesperson, Sunil Shastri, said. Mr Jagdish Shettigar, convenor of the part's economic cell added: ``The party has not withdrawn its statement... it stands.''

The view that is emerging in the BJP is that after the Communications Minister, Pramod Mahajan, expressed concern over the investment decision of the VSNL board (after the Tatas had bought 25 per cent of its shares), the party also examined the issue and came to the conclusion that the matter needed to be looked at closely, as otherwise the disinvestment process itself would get a bad name and ``people may start looking at the disinvestment process as an opportunity to siphon off funds from the PSUs''.

The impression at the party office is that the Communications Ministry is expected to follow up the matter, look at the issues from the legal point of view and take whatever action is possible. One partyman said that the BJP's effort is to ensure that when deals are made in the future, such things are not allowed to happen, by including a stringent clause on the use of funds available with the PSUs being disinvested.

The only ''concession'' that the party was willing to make to the sensibility of the Disinvestment Minister, Arun Shourie, was that its statement had nowhere questioned his credibility, it had not cast any aspersion on the disinvestment process, but had put a question mark on the post-disinvestment decision of the VSNL board which had sent a ``wrong signal.''

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