The RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh on Saturday announced a phase-wise agitation against the Narendra Modi government's disinvestment programme for Public Sector Units (PSUs) starting on March 15 and ending on November 11.
The decision was taken at a two-day meeting of BMS' PSUs Coordination Committee in Hyderabad that ended on Friday. The meeting came ten days after the deliberations of the BMS National Executive in Chennai on Budget 2021 "in the context of the onslaught of the government" against the central PSUs.
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In the Chennai meeting, the BMS had unanimously resolved to oppose the disinvestment in the name of strategic and nonstrategic entities and also against the policy of the government with regards to monetisation of the precious assets of the public sector enterprises.
It had then decided to hold a special meeting of the Coordination Committee comprising of CPSEs in the field of Banking, Insurance, Telecom, Oil, Power, Coal, NonCoal, Engineering, Defense Production Units, Railways, Ports, Ports, Shipyards, airports and Air India and chalk out a detailed plan of action.
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In the meeting in Hyderabad attended by BMS President HJ Pandya, General Secretary Binoy Kumar Sinha and Organising Secretary B Surendran, a consensus emerged that the BMS should strongly oppose the policies of the Centre on disinvestment, privatisation and monetisation.
For this, the meeting decided to conduct agitational programmes in different phases. In the first phase, industry-wise seminars will be held from March 15 to April 14 followed by unit-level workshops in May and a mass awareness campaign between June 14 to June 20.
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The fourth phase will see unit level mass demonstrations on July 15 followed by state-level conventions between September 20 and September 30. The sixth and final phase will be on November 23 when BMS will hold demonstrations at all Corporate Offices of all PSUs.