Members of Insurance Corporation Employees Union (Nellore division) staged demonstration at the LIC office here on Friday, protesting against the State government’s divestment plan and also the proposal under active consideration to go for public listing.
The lunch-hour demonstration was led by ICEU secretary Y.K. Krishna Kumar, who saw an attempt to privatise state-run utilities like the railways and BSNL. Recalling the corporation’s rise from a mere ₹5 crore to become a mammoth entity worth ₹31 lakh crore today, he said the government should not consider LIC a ‘golden duck’ and warned that any effort to hand it over to the corporate sector would be met with stiff resistance.
At Kadapa, the ICEU Kadapa division members Chandra Pal, Venugopal Reddy and A. Raghunatha Reddy, forming part of the joint front of employees, called the Centre’s decision ‘objectionable’. At a protest meet at Kadapa divisional office, they said LIC of India topped the world by meeting 99% of its claims. The company had secured impressive grades from several rating agencies in the world, but the Indian government had chosen to ignore the same, they rued. The leaders warned that they would go to any extent to protect the policyholders’ interests.
