The Congress on Friday described the first year of the Modi Government as a “year of disappointment, disastrous management and diabolical pain.”

Congress leader KC Venugopal said the six years of the Modi dispensation have seen fraying of bonds

of empathy, fraternity and brotherhood with increase in acts of communal and sectarian violence.

Party’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that at the end of six years, it appears the Modi Government is at war with its people and is inflicting wounds on them, instead of healing them. “It is inflicting wounds on Mother India,” he said.

“This Government is trying to fill coffers of the select rich and is inflicting pain on the poor,” Surjewala said.

On the BJP’s charge of the Congress playing politics over the Covid-19 crisis, Venugopal said the Opposition party did not indulge in any politics and gave suggestions instead.

“Being a responsible opposition, it is our duty to raise the problems faced by the common people. As Opposition, we highlighted the failures of the Government,” he said.

Venugopal said the Government “is totally insensitive” to the plight of migrant labourers and farmers.

Surjewala also demanded that a virtual session of Parliament be convened immediately to discuss pressing issues and the due process be set in motion for holding of meetings of various parliamentary committees. Modi and his cabinet had taken oath on this day last year for a second term in office.

The Congress also highlighted the failure of the Government on the economic front, saying the Prime Minister announced two crore jobs whereas India witnessed the highest unemployment rate in the last 45 years which reached in 2017-18 to 6.1 per cent overall — 7.8 per cent in urban India and 5.3 per cent in rural India.

“Post-Covid, India’s unemployment rate has soared to an unprecedented 27.11 per cent (CMIE),” he said.

He said under the Modi government, the GDP has become synonymous with ‘’Grossly Declining Performance’’.

“Most international and national rating agencies have predicted negative GDP growth in Financial Year 2020-21. The economy had been mismanaged to the point of ruin long before Covid-19,” he said.

“The way in which the Prime Minister holds talks with the chief ministers through video conferencing, why cannot the standing committees and Parliament also be allowed to convene important meetings through virtual sessions,” he said.

Venugopal also said that the six years of the Modi government witnessed “loan write-offs” for bank fraudsters to the tune of Rs 66 lakh crore from 2014-2015 to September 2019.

He pointed out that in the last six years, India witnessed 32,868 bank frauds involving public money to the tune of Rs 2.70 lakh crore and stressed assets of the banks rose to Rs 16.5 thousand crore. “Bank NPAs rose 423 per cent from Rs 2.24 lakh crore on June 30, 2014 to Rs 9.5 lakh crore in March 2020,” Venugopal said.

“The most shocking revelation of write-offs came on April 24, 2020, in an RTI reply. In the midst of Covid-19, the Modi government wrote off loans worth Rs 68,607 crore for the likes of Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi, Jatin Mehta, Vijay Mallya and others,” Congress alleged.

The Congress also slammed the Government over the Rs 20 lakh-crore Covid-19 relief package touted by the Prime Minister as 10 per cent of GDP to be a mere 0.83 per cent of GDP in reality.