West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to “stall and reverse the process of corporatisation and privatisation” of ordnance factories.
“I have been receiving reports that the Government of India has apparently been taking [a decision] to corporatise all the ordnance factories including the Ordnance Factory Board. It has also been suggested that this will finally lead to privatisation of these great national assets,” Ms. Banerjee wrote in her letter to the Prime Minister.
The Chief Minister said that Ordnance Factory Board, founded in 1775 with its headquarters in Kolkata, has 41 factories all over the country and nine raining institutes with about 1.6 lakh officers and employees and is considered to be the world’s largest government set up for manufacturing arms and ammunition. She expressed “shock and surprise” and argued that “this vital pillar of the country’s defence” and key industrial initiative is now being contemplated to be privatised without holding any consultation with the stakeholders.
“I would request you to kindly stall and reverse the process of corporatisation and privatisation in the greatest interest of the national security and defence of our country,” she said. Ms. Banerjee, in her two-page letter, noted that her government has not received any “inkling of discourses that have led to such inexplicable initiatives in the Government of India”.
Observing that that industrial policies of the Centre “have gradually been made more and more friendly towards the private companies”, the Chief Minister said that “core and strategic areas” should be kept unaffected in future.
