leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley on Wednesday slammed the UPA Government for corruption and slowdown of economic growth and said that it was facing a crisis of leadership and credibility due to which the atmosphere of enthusiasm has converted to that of cynicism.
Replying to the debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s speech, Jaitley charged the Government of suffering from policy paralysis due to duality of power centre with National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, which has no accountability, making policies despite being outside the government framework. This affects the implementation resulting in policy paralysis, growth in corruption and questions being raised about credibility, he said and urged the UPA government to introspect.
Though the Commonwealth Games was aimed to showcase India, it is remembered for corruption while the 2G scam has changed the entire success story of telecom revolution drastically as there are no buyers coming for spectrum auction now, he pointed out. He said that the corruption in coal block allocation revealed by CAG has resulted in revoking some decision and CBI probe being ordered which has resulted in power sector facing a paralysis thereby affecting the manufacturing sector growth.
Even in the VVIP helicopter scam, instead of finding out who got the illegal funds, the Government is planning to give the responsibility of probe to MPs fully knowing they have no means to interrogate, investigate or send letter rogatory, he lamented thereby conveying the BJP’s opposition to setting of a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the defence scam.
Jaitley said that despite facing big anti-corruption agitation, the government has not learnt its lesson and has not accepted some of the recommendations of the Rajya Sabha Select Committee on the issue and decided to give opportunity to corrupt officials by giving prior information so that they can destroy evidence and remove fund.
“When UPA came to power nine years ago, there was a buzz of excitement about India. The NDA had left power with 8 per cent growth rate and now, we may have a less than 5 per cent growth rate. The atmosphere has changed from that of enthusiasm to sense of cynicism about India,” he said and lamented the slowing of infrastructure projects like highways, PMGSY, power and coal sector.
Attacking Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Jaitley said the Government wants to bring in financial discipline through its budget in which `93,000 crore have been cut for social sector schemes. Jaitley said, “I want to ask who was creator of financial indiscipline that there is a need to bring in financial discipline. You took credit for expanding expenditure when there was financial difficulty. Now there is no money, you want to bring financial discipline and want a pat on your back.”
He urged the Prime Minister to assert himself as projects worth `7 lakh crore are “tangled” in controversies between different ministries. He also criticized the allocation of `10,000 crore for the proposed Food Security Bill by pointing out that actual hike for this project was `5,000 core only and wondered how this would cover 80 crore people under it with per head allocation coming to 60-62 paise per day. He wondered whether the FM who is known as PC or it is (magician) PC Sarkar,” he said.