New Delhi, December 02: Describing the Left Parties as “valued colleagues” of the earlier UPA government, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee today said it did not feel any “bondage of the Left”.
“I don’t consider there was any bondage of the Left. They were our valued colleagues,” he said in the Rajya Sabha while responding to remarks of some members that the government was going ahead with disinvestment after getting out of the bondage of the Left, which supported the earlier UPA regime.
The minister, who was replying to a calling attention motion on disinvestment of profit making central public sector enterprises (CPSEs), further said, “Government has done disinvestment of seven PSUs in UPA, when the Left was supporting the government.”
“Where is the bondage?” Mukherjee asked and said it was wrong to conclude that the government was going ahead with disinvestment because the Left Parties were not supporting it.
“I have done it (disinvestment) in UPA under the Common Minimum Programme. I am doing it now and if I am given a chance, I will do it in future”, the minister said.
“Let us live with basic differences…Left does not believe in disinvestment, I believe in disinvestment”, Mukherjee added.
–PTI–