Disinvestment tough pitch for Pranab

NEW DELHI: Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee may have brandished his trouble-shooting credentials to get the Manmohan Singh government���s disinvestment drive kick-started, but intransigent allies such as the Trinamool Congress and DMK are unlikely to play ball.

Mr Mukherjee, while addressing newspersons here this afternoon, said he was confident that he���d be able to persuade the naysayers to give up their traditional stance on disinvestment. ���I���ve handled the coalition members for so many years. I���ll handle this issue. I���ll manage them (the coalition partners) just as I���ve done in the past,��� he said in response to specific queries on whether the government would be able to get its disinvestment programme back on track in the face of stiff opposition from allies such as Trinamool and DMK.

But the senior Congress leader, a veteran of several successful trouble-shooting ventures in the past, may find the two parties a bit hard to crack. In an attempt to shore up their core constituencies, leaders of the two outfits have already declared their opposition to plans to mop up resources by divesting government shares in PSUs.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had only earlier this month spelt out her party���s stand on the issue.

Participating in a meeting of the full Planning Commission, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on September 2, she raised the red flag over disinvestment plans, and, instead, suggested to the UPA top brass, including finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and Plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, to opt for public-private-partnership (PPP) model to raise funds in implementing infrastructure projects. ���She asked other ministries to follow the PPP model being adopted by the railway ministry,��� Trinamool sources said.

The railway minister���s opposition came at a time when Planning Commission called for a ���bold and clear��� disinvestment programme that would help in meeting the resource gap for the plan expenditure in the next two years.

���In our view, in 2010-11 and 2011-12 a bold and clear programme for disinvestment would help meet some of these shortages (in resources for the plan expenditure),��� Mr Ahluwalia had argued.

DMK, too, is set against the programme. While participating in a discussion in the RS in June this year, Ms Kanimozhi, daughter of DMK supremo and Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi, categorically argued against government���s new focus on the disinvestment agenda.

���I welcome that the UPA government has laid a lot of emphasis on welfare schemes and on social sector spending. But we also have to keep away from the temptation of generating revenue by disinvesting our PSUs,��� Ms Kanimozhi said.

DMK MP argued that divesting PSUs ���will not help���. This was especially so to a country like India where the socialist model was very important, she said.