Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interview to news agency Asian News International a “post-truth propaganda” exercise, CPI (M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury in an edit in the party’s mouthpiece People’s Democracy said Mr. Modi did not refer to a single promise made by the BJP in 2014.
Mr. Yechury also asserted that the interview was a “set-up.” “In an interaction lasting more than one and half hours, the PM did not even once refer to the promises that he and the BJP made to the Indian people in 2014 and why even a single one of them had not been delivered so far. This is a post-truth propaganda exercise,” he wrote.
The BJP government did not keep its promise to give minimum support price one and half times higher than the cost of production, he charged.
“The deepening agrarian distress is directly due to the betrayal of the assurances given to rural India,” he wrote.
Mr. Yechury said there can be “no greater falsification” to claim that demonetisation brought all the black money into the banking system.
The CPI (M) General Secretary also slammed the Prime Minister’s comments on GST. The PM had said GST simplified the tax system. He pointed out that though the number of people filing returns may have increased tax collections had drastically fallen.
He also pointed out that the Prime Minister did not speak a word on the promise to give two crore jobs every year. “By now ten crore additional jobs should have been created. Instead, what we have is largescale lay-offs, the destruction of the informal economy, the ruination of the MSME sector – all resulting in unprecedented growth of unemployment,” Mr. Yechury wrote.
Countering Mr. Modi’s statement that the 2019 election will be a contest between janata versus gathbandhan, Mr. Yechury said it will be a contest between the Prime Minister and his government and the people of India.
