YSRCP MPs stage walkout over Visakhapatnam steel plant issue

New Delhi: The YSRCP MPs staged a walkout from the Rajya Sabha here on Monday protesting over the Centre's decision to privatise the RINL (Visakha steel plant) ignoring the fact that the plant was not allotted any captive coal mines.

Speaking on the issue on Monday, YSRCP MP and Parliamentary Party leader V Vijayasai Reddy, hit out at the Centre for privatising the plant instead of reviving it despite the appeals of the state government. The PSUs were fulfilling their social obligations by providing jobs to lakhs while the private industry worked only for its profits, he said.

He said the Centre had not only failed in fulfilling its bifurcation promises to AP but also had taken away the federal right of the state to auction mines. The new law that the state government should forgo rights over auctioning of coal mines after a certain period was highly discriminatory. Allocation of mines to private industry was provided for in the Bill, but the PSUs had been deprived of the same.

Meanwhile, the government had also admitted in Rajya Sabha on Monday that there was a shortage of coking coal for steel plants in the country. Union minister Prahlad Joshi was responding to the query of Vijayasai Reddy. He said the PSUs could participate in auctions for coal blocks alongside the private industry.