Over a hundred LIC workers of Dhanbad on Tuesday staged a protest against the Centre’s announcement to increase the FDI in insurance sector from 49 per cent to 75 per cent, during Monday’s Budget presentation.

Protesters under the banner of the Insurance Employees’ Association gathered at the Randhir Verma Chowk to burn an effigy of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, as they shouted slogans against the government.

Hemant Kumar, General Secretary of the Hazaribagh unit of the association, said, “There is absolutely no justification of FDI hike in the insurance industry.”

“FDI hike in insurance will only hike foreign capital and gain greater control over domestic savings,” claimed Kumar.

He said that it was important for a developing country like India to have control over its domestic savings. Allowing foreign capital greater control over these would harm the nation, he claimed.

“Our union is of the firm opinion that privatisation of any public sector general insurance company is not in the interest of the nation. Despite intense competition the public sector general insurance companies have held their ground to retain market dominance,” said Kumar.

The government should have consolidated the Public Sector General Insurance companies to enable them to compete, he said.

Raising the issue of LIC IPO he said that it is completely against the concept of Aatmanirbhar Bharat as LIC is the only institution of its kind, which doesn’t create profit for itself and distributes the entire surplus generated to the government and policy holders.

The LIC IPO will undermine the very objectives of its creation as it was set up by an Act in 1956, the protesters alleged.

“Rather than delivering value to the nation and its policyholders, LIC will be forced to work for creating value and generating profits for the shareholders,” said another protester Ajoy Mukherjee.