Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday rejected the Opposition’s charge of “selling family assets” through the budget stress on privatisation, terming it as a “lazy allegation”.

All the previous governments have done disinvestment in the past, and the Narendra Modi regime has formulated a clear policy on which companies to be divested and the strategic sectors that are not to be touched rather than doing one company selloff at a time, she said in an address to businesses here.

The budget proposals to divest stakes, which includes the sale of two public sector banks and a general insurer, have been panned by the Opposition.

“It is not what the Opposition says about selling family silver, it’s not at all,” she said at meeting of business people here. “Family silver should be strengthened, it should be our takat (strength)... because you’ve spread it so thinly, there are many of them (PSUs) who are not able to survive and the few who can perform do not get the due attention. You need them to scale up so that they meet the aspirations of a growing India,” she said.