A day after the Union Cabinet gave the green signal for the privatisation of national carrier Air India and five of its subsidiaries, the Shiv Sena took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s decision. They said that tomorrow, the government may similarly look to sell Kashmir citing expenditure on its security, Hindustan Times reported on Friday.
“Air India is an icon of the country’s pride and prosperity,” the Shiv Sena wrote in an editorial published in its the Marathi mouthpiece, Saamana. “The government is looking to sell Air India because the debt has climbed to Rs 50,000 crore. Tomorrow, saying they cannot afford expenses of providing for Kashmir’s security our administrators may even go out to sell Kashmir,” the Sena said.
The Shiv Sena said the financial health of Air India, which declined under the previous Congress regime, was expected to improve under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. “If this decision was taken by the previous Congress government, the BJP would have heavily criticised it and asked if the government cannot run the national carrier how is it going to run the country.”
The party said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not mention why the national carrier, which at one point of time had a good name and an identity, had reached this stage. “Air India’s share in the industry has dropped because officials in the civil aviation ministry sold a lot of profit-making routes to private airlines. That was corruption. The Modi government had an opportunity to make things good, which it did not do.”
The Shiv Sena also blamed shifting of Air India’s headquarters from Mumbai to Delhi for its current state.
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