Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state Vice-President and parliamentarian Bhupendra Singh alleged on Sunday that the Congress-led Union government is using the petroleum ministry for profit of multinational corporate houses.
He alleged that the Congress party ousted ministers like Jaipal Reddy, Murli Deora and Mani Shankar Aiyyar from the petroleum ministry in a very short span of time because they were coming in the way of party’s objective to serve corporate profits.
In his statement, Singh has asked Union Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily to explain “the economic policies of the Union government due to which four ministers have been changed in the petroleum ministry in last nine years while at the same time, despite the ‘coalgate’ scam of thousands of crore rupees, Coal Minister Prakash Jaiswal remains firm on his post.”
He said that this amounted to betrayal of the people of this country. “To give the natural resources of this country to multinational companies and corporate houses at throwaway prices is cheating towards the common people of this country,” he said. Referring to the recent statement of Petroleum Minister Moily that the country is under pressure of the petroleum importing companies, Singh said that this has taken the country by surprised.
“The petroleum importers are public sector industries of the Central government and if these companies are threatening the petroleum minister it raises questions about the intentions and policies of the UPA government,” he remarked.
Singh said that there are vast reserves of oil and gas in the country. The NDA government wanted to reduce cost of petroleum production and it had even bought oil fields abroad, but after coming into power, the Congress has halted the work of exploring and developing petroleum resources in the country, he alleged, adding that this has led to increasing dependence of the country on imports putting pressure on country’s foreign reserve.