Tuesday, January 3 2006 09:54 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The Left parties, which have successfully employed pressure tactics in the past to stop the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from divesting stake in state-owned companies including BHEL, yesterday (Jan 02, 2006) said sale of public shares in profit-making PSUs was not the proper way to raise resources.

Maintaining that there were other ways and means to raise resources, top Left leaders told reporters after an over 90-minute meeting that they would submit their proposals on resource mobilisation to the government at the next UPA-Left Coordination Committee, likely to be held next week.

"The Left parties opined that disinvestment of shares of profitable public sector units is not the proper way to raise resources", CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat and his CPI counterpart A B Bardhan said. Their stand assumes significance as the government had proposed divesting small portion of its holdings (between 5-10 per cent) in profit-making PSUs, while agreeing not to touch Navratna PSUs.

The Left has also decided to raise the issue of 'privatisation' of Delhi and Mumbai airports, which they have been opposing, at the next meeting of the Coordination Committee.

The parties have demanded the scrapping of the ongoing bidding process for the two metro airports and suggested that their modernisation should be left to the Airports Authority of India. They have also sought building of two Greenfield airports in Delhi and Mumbai through the private-foreign investment route.

At their meeting today, the Left parties also maintained that privatisation of the pension fund was 'unacceptable' as this was the only social security benefit the millions of employees had.