The Congress on Friday slammed the Government for freezing the Dearness Allowance (DA) of Central Government employees and pensioners and demanded scrapping of the bullet train and central vista projects to save 30 per cent from the Government expenditure.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi tweeted: "Cutting the expenditure on dearness allowance is inhuman."
"It is an insensitive and inhumane decision of the Government to cut DA of central employees, pensioners and jawans who are serving the public while fighting coronavirus, instead of suspending the bullet train project and the Central Vista beautification project of lakhs of crores (of rupees)," he said in a tweet in Hindi.
Addressing a Press conference on the issue, party chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala too asked the Government to curtail 30 per cent of its own expenses and shelve the Central Vista redevelopment and bullet train projects to save money to be used to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
"The Government of India, instead of helping people by giving them financial support in this crisis, is hurting them. Instead of curtailing its own wasteful expenditures, the Government is cutting the money of the middle class people," he told an video press conference.
The Government should scrap their pet projects and save Rs 1,30,000 crore and divert the money to fight COVID-19, added Surjewala.
The Congress said that the decision of the Government will adversely impact the morale of the armed forces.
As part of the austerity drive, the Centre on Thursday announced suspension of DA hike for the central employees till July 2021. Moreover, ministries and departments have also been categorised for fixing a cap on their quarterly expenditure, limiting it to 15-20 per cent of the annual budget expenditure for FY21 in the first quarter.
"Only one month ago, on March 23 , 2020, the Centre passed a budget of Rs. 30.42 Lakh crores. It is, but, presumed that budget is a correct accounting of expected revenue as also expected expenditure. In case, ever, the expected revenue was to fall, the first thing that you will proceed to do, is to cut down wasteful and vanity expenditure rather than hitting at the income of people of India," said the party in a statement.
"This is not the first time in the last 30 days that they have proceeded to do so, please remember that only recently in March 2020, the Government had proceeded to reduce the interest across the board of 1-1.5 percent on all national savings schemes. Not only that, the State Bank of India had reduced its interest rate on savings bank accounts from Rs 3.25 to 3 percent and on fixed deposit by half percent. By these two steps alone, Government of India from national savings schemes had deducted Rs 19,000 crore annually from the 30 crore depositors and the national savings scheme and of the 44 crore 51 lakh depositors in State Bank of India by reduction of interests on FDs and on saving accounts, they have lost annually interest component of Rs 9,429 crore," Surjewala said.