The sponsoring committee of trade unions met at the CITU central office on 9^th July under the presidentship of Com. K.L. Mahendra, general secretary, AITUC.

The meeting paid homage to the martyrs of Kargil, who laid down their lives in defence of the country.

The meeting took a serious note of the recent decisions of the government regarding the telecom policy, disinvestment in nine public sector undertakings, privatisation of the FM Channel in Radio, etc and condemned the decisions taken as totally unwarranted for any government. This is particularly unwarranted for a caretaker government, which cannot take such important policy decisions, which require approval of parliament.

Despite continuous opposition from all sections of workers and the trade union movement in the country, the government has gone ahead to disinvest nine of the best performing and most prestigious Nava Ratna public sectors in the country like IOC, GAIL, ITDC, MTNL, etc. The government has already disinvested Rs.10,000 crore this year. The decision to privatise Indian Airlines was taken earlier.

It is to be noted that the new telecom policy has not yet been approved by the parliament. There is a big scam involved in allowing private operators, including MNCs, to move from the license regime to the revenue sharing formula. No wonder that the big business has hailed the decisions. As demanded by them, the government may further go ahead to corporatise the Department of Telecommunication, i.e. step forward for its privatisation.

Such brazen surrender of the government to the demands of the private sector and the MNCs has again exposed the hoax of its "Swadeshi" and emboldened the big business to make further demand for disinvestment beyond 50 per cent, so that the overall control over these PSUs is vested with them. This will further enable them to come out of the Article 12 of the Constitution and the ambit of compulsory audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General, as well as the Central Vigilance Commissioner.