evidence: The story so far: In the Union Budget for 2023-24, the government has set a disinvestment target of ₹51,000 crore, down nearly 21% from the budget estimate for the current year and just ₹1,000 crore more than the revised estimate. It is also the lowest target in seven years. Moreover, the Centre has not met the disinvestment target for 2022-23 so far, having realised ₹31,106 crore to date, of which, ₹20,516 crore or close to a third of the budgeted estimate came from the IPO of 3.5% of its shares in the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). [...] To begin with, different central governments over the last three decades have been able to meet annual disinvestment targets only six times. Since coming to power in 2014, the BJP-led NDA government has met (and overachieved) its disinvestment targets twice. In 2017-18, the government earned disinvestment receipts of a little over ₹1 lakh crore as against a target of ₹72,500 crore, and in 2018-19, it brought in ₹94,700 crore when the target was set at ₹80,000 crore.