LEFT parties CPM, CPI and CPIML held a dharna on 13 December 2019 at the Tehri Hydroelectric Development Corporation (THDC) headquarters in Rishikesh against the Modi government’s attempts at disinvestment and privatization of THDC. The Samajvadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party also joined in the dharna. The Modi government is planning to sell the 75% Central government shares in TDHC to NTPC. This is part of the government’s design to sell public sector units across the country. A recent story in the Indian Express reports that the process of privatization of about 100 railway tracks is nearly complete. The THDC was formed for the construction of the Tehri Dam and it is currently one of the profit-making public sector units, ranked as a ‘mini Navratna’ company.
CPIML leader Indresh Maikhury told the protesters that recently the Urban Development Minister of Uttarakhand Madan Kaushik has said in the Assembly that if THDC was going to be sold, the center would have first consulted the Uttarakhand government; as this has not been done, let us assume the center could not be selling THDC. The Minister was deliberately misleading the House because the THDC is a public sector unit in which the Center has 75% shares and the Uttar Pradesh government has 25% shares. When Uttarakhand has no shares at all, where is the need to ask them!
He also reminded an earlier injustice done. When Uttarakhand became a separate State from Uttar Pradesh, people of the state were cheated in the division of assets, a prime example being the Tehri Dam and the THDC. The dam is on Uttarakhand soil, the towns and villages of Uttarakhand were submerged, the people of Uttarakhand were displaced, but the State has no share in THDC and gets only a very small part of the electricity produced by the Tehri Dam. BJP is responsible for this injustice against Uttarakhand as the then BJP governments at the Center and in Uttar Pradesh partitioned the assets in such a way that Uttarakhand is deprived of resources present in its own land. The Congress is also responsible to an extent as they, as the Opposition, never raised their voice against this injustice to Uttarakhand. The fight to save THDC should also be seen as the fight for the people’s right to the resources present in Uttarakhand.
