The Congress on Tuesday sought to pick holes in the President's address to Parliament to mark the start of the budget session, claiming that no section of society, apart from the RSS and BJP, was happy under the Narendra Modi government.
“President has said 'sabka saath, sabka vikas'. But they are keeping the company of only the RSS and working for only the BJP's progress. Neither farmer, nor worker, nor youth nor any other section is happy,” Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said at a press conference here.
Mr. Azad, however, underlined that the attack was not on the President but on the government. He said the number of farmers’ suicides had gone up in the last one year, with no farm loan waiver — unlike under the UPA regime — there was much lower job creation than promised, and allocations for Dalits had gone down, apart from the unease of the minorities under the government.
Referring to the railways, Mr. Azad said the frequency of serious accidents in recent times was unprecedented.
Border violations
Mr. Azad sought to know why there were more ceasefire violations even after the surgical strikes along the Line of Control, even as he said that the Congress had supported the strikes.
“The Prime Minister had said (during the UPA government) that our government was weak,” Mr. Azad said, going on to say that the number of ceasefire violations and soldiers killed in the last two years was higher than the figure for the past 10 years.
He said the Congress wanted a debate in Parliament on the killing of soldiers in Kashmir.
He said that while the President's address mentioned demonetisation and cited concerns over black money, counterfeit currency and militancy, almost all the money had returned to banks, meaning hardly any black money was unearthed.
The Congress leader pointed out that new counterfeit notes were being seized, indicating that the exercise had been incapable of destroying counterfeit currency. He claimed that ₹15,000-crore to ₹20,000-crore would be spent on printing the new currency notes.
Referring to the Economic Survey, Mr. Azad said the industrial growth rate was expected to come down from 7.4% to 5.2%.
He said official estimates of GDP growth rate were 6.75-7.5%, adding that the IMF had scaled down India's growth forecast from 7.6%to 6.6%.
Mr. Azad said the key reason why there was an increase in indirect taxes was that taxes on petroleum products had been increased and the benefits of declining global crude oil prices were not passed on to consumers.
The Congress’ leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge said the party wanted to discuss the ‘loss of autonomy’ of institutions like the RBI and CBI.
