It is time for the government to be told that it cannot use the cash rich Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) as a piggy bank from which it can take out crores to finance its own agenda. This money is reportedly taken out of the policyholders’ fund. In all likelihood it will go down the drain and the bank will come back for more as this is the second time it is being bailed out. Admittedly the government is the owner of this giant insurance organisation but it is the hard earned money of the 29 crore policyholders that it is playing with. It is the money of the ordinary man who invests for a secure life and for his family after death. So the government’s proposal to make LIC take over the terminally sick IDBI Bank is shocking. Additionally, whatever money that LIC will shell out for this will go to the government and not the bank. Interestingly when the Congress was in power and used LIC to bail it out to the tune of Rs 12,749 crores when the ONGC share sale failed to get enough subscribers, the Opposition BJP party called it “daylight robbery of people’s money”. Now the BJP is continuing the game of daylight robbery by making LIC to bail out the IDBI Bank which has non-performing assets of Rs 55,000 crores and stressed assets of the same amount. LIC already has a stake in the bank. As a stakeholder in the bank it is perplexing that it remained silent when the bank was going downhill.
All this raises alarming questions. The foremost being are public sector units being looted by the majority owner, namely the government? PSUs have been repeatedly used by successive governments to bail out sick units or failed attempts to raise funds.
