West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stall and reverse the process of corporatising ordnance factories in the interest of national security and the country's defence.
Her missive comes in the backdrop of the Centre's bid to corporatise all the ordnance factories of the country, including the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), which has its head quarters in Kolkata.
The OFB with its 41 factories, nine training institutes across the country and about 1.6 lakh officers and employees has often been called the fourth pillar of the Indian Defence apparatus which produces a vast range of arms and equipment for the armed forces, she wrote.
"I am shocked and surprised to know that this vital pillar of the country's defence and this key industrial initiative for our land is now being contemplated to be subjected to a sudden exercise of degovernmentalisation, for which there has been not even an iota of stakeholders' consultations uptill now", she said.