Panel Bids For More Say In Psu Offloading

Commission chairman G V Ramakrishna called on the minister on Thursday and reportedly gave an ultimatum that the commission will not begin functioning until it gets these powers. This was followed up by a call on Maran by Jairam Ramesh, advisor to finance minister P Chidambaram, yesterday morning.

Conceptually, the commission is to be serviced by the department of public enterprises, but it has been functioning from the South Block, with administrative support of the finance ministry. Hence the intervention of the finance ministry emissaries, government sources explained.

Sources said the industry ministry was unwilling to grant the powers sought by the commission. Restructuring of PSUs is entirely the ministry's baby, they maintained.

The commission is adamant that it will not be able to function efficiently unless it is permitted to examine the gamut of PSUs for the disinvestment process. It now has the mandate to just recommend disinvestment in PSUs referred to it by the core group in the government. The selection of PSUs in which the government proposes to disinvest is left to the core group.

The commission has argued that its role is redundant if the selection is left to the core group and the actual disinvestment is handled by merchant bankers appointed by the government.

Interestingly, the commission's view is shared by the Left parties. CPI secretary D Raja has often said that the role of the commission should not be reduced to that of a rubber stamp to give sanctity to the government's disinvestment decisions and its expertise should be used to reform the public sector.