Diminishing India’s surge in World Bank’s ease of doing business global ranking from 130th position to 100th, All India Congress Committee (AICC) vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that the reality was completely different.
Addressing a public rally of farmers and small traders at Jambusar in Bharuch district in South Gujarat as part of Navsarjan Gujarat Yatra the Congress vice-president said that instead of listening to outsiders, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley need to visit those who were running SMEs and ask them whether doing business in the nation improved or further deteriorated.
Forget ease of doing business, SMEs were struggling hard for their survival post demonetization and rollout of GST, said Rahul adding, “Demonetization move of Modi government destroyed economy. GDP has gone down to two per cent but the Prime Minister didn’t realize its adverse impact and went on to rollout GST as high as 28 per cent. Hence I coined a new definition for GST – Gabbar Singh Tax, which means hard earn money stolen from people.’’
The 47-year-old Congress leader who landed at Vadodara airport on morning kicked off third leg of the Yatra in the poll bound home-state of Prime Minister Modi. He will stay three days in the southern part of the state and cover 30 assembly constituencies in six districts including Bharuch, Tapi, Navsari, Valsad and Daang.
He went on to say that there is major resentment among the people over demonetisation and wrong implementation of GST. Scion of Gandhi-Nehru family further said that the Prime Minister should understand that all the money in cash is not black. On the PM Modi’s claim to bring back money from Swiss Bank, he said that the Modi government at centre completed three years at the helm but not a single person went behind the bar for having black money. Taking a jibe at Modi on the issue of Vijay Mallya’s departure from India post mammoth financial scam, Gandhi said that what Modiji did to take Mallya back who is having a gala time in london.
Gandhi who is set to become AICC president in coming days and would take reign of the oldest political party in the country from his mother Sonia also hit out at much talked about Gujarat Model saying that every community in Gujarat is angry and sad except 5-10 industrialists close to the ruling party. ‘‘All other are on street agitating may it be Patidars, OBCs or Dalits.’’
The Gujarat Model is nothing but snatching away land, water and electricity from people and giving away to select few industrialists, he claimed, adding that in Gujarat one need to shell out money for every work otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to get your work done.