The Hindu : Uma Bharti takes pot shots at Shourie

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 23, 2002

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National

Uma Bharti takes pot shots at Shourie

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI OCT. 22. The Union Minister for Coal and Mines, Uma Bharti, today tried to keep away from the controversy over public sector disinvestment, but in the end could not resist taking some pot shots at the Disinvestment Minister, Arun Shourie.

Ms Bharti had gone public earlier that her objection to the disinvestment of National Aluminium Company Limited (Nalco), which functions under the administrative charge of the Coal and Mines Ministry, was on the procedure to be adopted and not against public sector disinvestment per se.

Asked about the Nalco disinvestment at a news conference here, Ms Bharti repeated that her Ministry had given some suggestions on the exercise which had been ignored. She would, therefore, now place the suggestions before the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, when appointments materialised. She, however, declined to share the Ministry's suggestions with the media.

Ms Bharti also made it clear that she had no comments to make on Mr. Shourie's comment that in case Nalco was not privatised, it would make losses in a few years just as the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) had turned into a loss-making unit. Having said that, she could not resist the comment that "I am a sanyasin and those who claim to speak about the future are trying to take the place of God.''

She also made a special mention of the fact that Nalco's profits had been rising and in the last three years, the company had reported profits of Rs. 403 crores, Rs. 655 crores and Rs. 511 crores, respectively.

The company would make profits in future too, she said, inadvertently getting into the business of forecasting.

She also emphasised the point that Nalco had currently taken up a Rs 4,000-crore expansion plan and that 70 per cent work had been done.

The proposed 60 per cent disinvestment of Nalco's equity is planned in three stages — domestic sale, American Depository Receipts (ADR) and strategic sale — but sources say that the Coal and Mines Ministry has objected to the strategic sale proposal when the company was undertaking an ambitious expansion plan.

Secondly, it had expressed opposition to the appointment of a single advisor for all three stages of sale.

`Digvijay was a VHP member'

PTI reports:

Hitting out at the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, Ms. Bharti today alleged that he was a former member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

She alleged that she had visited Mr. Singh's residence way back in 1968-69 when he was part of the VHP.

Maintaining that she held no personal grouse against Mr. Singh, Ms. Bharti said he was like an elder brother to her and she continued to have good relations with him.

The Minister was critical of the demand by Mr. Singh and the Chattisgarh Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi, for revision of royalty, stating that the demands were politically motivated given the fact that Centre had some months back revised the same.

"These demands have been made only to provoke me to comment," she said, adding that Mr. Singh was a "big politician".

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