The UPA government’s decision to include Anil Ambani-led Reliance Capital as one of the managers of the Employees Provident Fund - a corpus of about Rs2.5 lakh crore
NEW DELHI: The UPA government’s decision to include Anil Ambani-led Reliance Capital as one of the managers of the Employees Provident Fund - a corpus of about Rs2.5 lakh crore - has kicked up a political row with both the Left and the Right lambasting the government for “paying the cost” for the support (from Samajwadi Party) it got to win the trust vote last week.
“The reported late selection of Reliance Capital as one of the fund managers is an indication of the cost of support to this tainted government,” the CPI(M) said, questioning the rationale for handing over “crores of rupees of workers’ funds to corporate for speculation in stock markets”.
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javedkar said, “The fund was managed by State Bank of India (SBI) very efficiently. Suddenly, three private companies have been roped in. Reliance Capital is one of them. This appears to be the cost paid for political expediency,” he said.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, however, said the company got it on merit. “The proposal was lying since the end of 2004 and even then Reliance Capital was in the picture,” he added.
On the charges that making Reliance Capital as one of the fund managers was a “payback” in lieu of the support extended by the Samajwadi Party to the UPA government during the trust vote, Singhvi said, “Do you see it as a payback?”
The government had on Tuesday announced the inclusion of three players - ICICI Prudential, HSBC and Reliance Capital - to break the over 50-year-long monopoly of SBI.
“While the companies can make profits, there is no guarantee of minimum returns to the workers. Thus, the savings of workers over years of hard work can be wiped out through speculation,” the CPI(M) politburo said in a statement.
The CPI-M said the government should refrain from implementing this “anti-worker decision”, wherein the EPF trustees would “hand over huge amounts” of workers’ provident fund contributions to private corporate entities.
“As a result, about Rs 2,40,000 crore in the corpus fund and another Rs 30,000 crore of the annual incremental fund will be literally gifted to the corporate,” the CPI(M) said, adding that this decision would reverse “a hard won gain of the working classes over years of struggle for a minimum guaranteed return on their contribution, post retirement.”
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