Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Monday described the Congress’ income guarantee scheme as a “bluff” perpetrated on the poor.
At a press conference in New Delhi, Mr. Jaitley said that the Congress party “has a history of bluff arguments” and cited the loan waivers the party had promised and Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Karnataka, saying that those promises remain unfulfilled in most places.
In a blog earlier in the day, he pointed out that the expenditure incurred by the current government on ongoing welfare schemes totted up to ₹1,06,800 annually per household as against the ₹72,000 promised by the Congress.
The Finance Minister said the government had annually paid out ₹5.34 lakh crore under various welfare schemes and subsidies for food, fertilizers, farmers and Ayushman Bharat.
‘Simple arithmetic’
“If the Congress Party’s announcement is tested on simple arithmetic, ₹72,000 [per annum] for five crore families works out to be ₹3.6 lakh crore, which is less than 2/3rd of what is being given,” Mr. Jaitley said in his blog post.
“The party has a legacy of slogans with no resources. It has a history of bluff announcements. Karnataka has spent only ₹2,600 crore, Madhya Pradesh ₹3,000 crore and Punjab ₹5,500 crore,” Mr. Jaitley said.
He also criticised previous Congress governments, especially that of late prime minister Indira Gandhi, as only “redistributing poverty” rather than any real assault on it, and said that her father, Jawaharlal Nehru’ s “Nehruvian model” stagnated growth.
He said that the Congress had misled the country on the issue of poverty for 50 years. “Even after giving that slogan ( gareebi hatao , ‘remove poverty’), if today you think that 20% people don’t even have an income of ₹12,000, then the cross hangs on your neck for letting down poor of the country,” he said
