Letting no opportunity pass by to heckle the Bharatiya Janata Party, its saffron ally, the Shiv Sena has slammed the Narendra Modi-led NDA, trashing its ‘acche din’ credo as “shallow sloganeering” as the country continued to reel under ratcheting commodity prices.
While it had recently adopted a laudatory tone to lavish praises on Mr. Modi’s successful US visit, the Sena, in a strident edit in its party mouthpiece Saamna, did a volte-face and lambasted the Prime Minister for failing to rein in the prices of essential commodities like rice, wheat, oil, sugar and vegetables.
“The average expenditure incurred in a household of four has increased from five thousand to eight thousand,” said the edit.
Remarking that the price onslaught was causing a severe strain on the budgets of middle-class homes, the edit censured the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government in Maharashtra for imposing fresh surcharges on petrol and diesel.
The Maharashtra government raised the tax slab to generate Rs. 1600 crore that will be used to palliate the drought-stricken regions of Marathwada and Vidarbha in the State.
Stating that the Modi government needed a reality check on its financial management systems, the Sena wryly opined that while it had been easy to heap blame on former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an economist, the new government found it much harder to consign the genie of price-rise in the bottle.
