BPCL takeover is not privatisation but theft, says Rahul Gandhi
KOCHI: The ongoing protests against privatisation of BPCL Kochi Refinery has entered the next level by garnering national attention with former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi joining the stir on Saturday. Blazing all guns against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing the Save BPCL Save India campaign organized by Congress, Rahul Gandhi termed the privatisation a ‘theft’.
“This is not privatisation, this is ‘theft’. What Narendra Modi is doing is helping 15 big powerful corporates, his friends. They are not his friends, they are his masters, his owners. Because you see, without them, Narendra Modi is nothing. He is a little balloon. It is their money that puts him on India’s television screens,” Rahul said. His masters hired him for a job. It is a clear deal that the corporates will do marketing for him and he will give BPCL to them in return. It means if he does not give BPCL to him, they will throw him out, he added.
The Congress leader alleged that the country’s economic growth has fallen from 9 per cent to 4. Under the new method of calculating GDP, it will come to 2.5 per cent only. “People might think that demonetisation was a foolish act committed by Narendra Modi. People might think that GST was implemented in a bad way. But this is not true. The real reason is it was done to clear the way for India’s biggest corporates. It was an assassination of India’s informal sector, farmers and small and medium business,” he said.
India was sold to British by Maharajas who ran the country. They were called Maharajas then, called Narendra Modi now, he said. “This is not Modi government, it is Ambani-Adani government. The man who sold the oil company having assets worth Rs 8 lakh crore for Rs 50,000 crore says he is a nationalist,” Rahul Gandhi said.
Rahul Gandhi addressed the meeting after hearing the plights of BPCL workers and trade union leaders. P Vinod, a CITU leader, urged him to lead the protest as only Congress could conduct a nationwide strike against the takeover.
The Congress has been conducting a campaign against the takeover of the PSU, for the past 46 days. Kochi Refineries Ltd was set up by the state government.MPs Benny Behanan and Hibi Eden, MLAs V D Satheesan, V P Sajeendran and V K Ebrahimkunju, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal and other leaders spoke.