Congress on Wednesday hit out at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, saying she is more interested in Uranus and Pluto than in steering the country’s economy towards recovery.
A day after the Government released its inflation data, Congress said the FM was busy tweeting pictures from NASA’s webb telescope rather than explaining to the country how she planned to rein in inflationary trends.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who is currently travelling abroad, hit out at the government over price rise, rising unemployment and debt and the fall in the value of the rupee. “When ‘Egonomics’ trumps ‘Economics’...,” he said in a tweet citing figures of government debt, unemployment and the value of the rupee.
At the AICC Press conference, Congress spokesman Gaurav Vallabh accused the Modi Government of polarising society and creating disharmony instead of tackling rising inflation, unemployment and depreciating Rupee. The economics professor said with rising inflation, it was expected that the Finance Minister would come out with a plan on how to tackle inflation, but she has different priorities.
“Unfortunately, our Finance Minister is showing sky-road to planets, and is unable to show the way forward to our economy,” Vallabh said.
Vallabh also alleged that the BJP has brought about a “doom with 7s”, with retail inflation at 7.01 percent, unemployment at 7.8 percent and Rupee depreciated 7 percent in the last six months vs the US Dollar. “While these are worrying data points, the BJP government is in deep slumber,” he said.
“Any government can bring relief to the common mass only when sympathy leads over apathy. The ED and CBI are not tools that bring relief. Unless the BJP Government moves beyondED politics, common Indians will continue suffering,” he alleged.
Attacking the government, Rahul shared a chart sharing details mentioning government’s debt in 2014 was `56 lakh crore and it is `139 lakh crore in 2022. Similarly, he said unemployment is at 7.8 per cent in 2022 against 4.7 per cent in 2014 and the LPG price is `1,053 against `410 in 2014.
Rahul also claimed that the per capita debt in 2022 is `1,01,048 against `44,348 in 2014 and the trade deficit now is USD 190 billion against USD 135 billion in 2014. The chart also stated that the value of the rupee in 2014 was ` 59 per US dollar and it is `80 per dollar.