Congress, on Monday, attacked the government over rising inflation and unemployment and announced plans to hold a historic rally in Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi under the leadership of party’s former president Rahul Gandhi.
Giving this information at the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee headquarters here on Monday, Congress national spokesperson and chairperson of the digital platform, Supriya Shrinet, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi used to talk a lot while being in the opposition but today he had suppressed the people under the burden of inflation. She said that the fact was that Modi had only two brothers -- unemployment and inflation.
Shrinet said the income of 83 per cent people of the country had decreased. She claimed that inflation was not limited to petrol, diesel as the prices of flour, pulses, rice, milk, curd, lassi were also on fire.
“The government cannot hide behind novel coronavirus. The country's economy had started deteriorating due to demonetisation and goods and services tax (GST) before the COVID-19 era,” she claimed.
Shrinet said that since 2016, the growth rate had fallen to 4.1. “In the government of Manmohan Singh, 27 crore people were taken out of poverty line, while at present, 23 crore people went below poverty line,” she said.
While accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of failing to check inflation, Shrinet said that the growth during the Modi regime between 2014 to 2022 was only in prices of all commodities from cooking gas to petrol/diesel to edible oils, grains and dairy products. She said essential commodities like Wheat flour, milk, dal, rice, lassi, curd were now out of the reach of the common man.
Shrinet said that in 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had told the voters that essential items like food grains, curd, lassi and buttermilk were kept out of the purview of GST but in 2022 he imposed GST on these same items and blamed the state governments for it.
She said that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had told a lie as the governments of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh had opposed the imposition of tax in the GST Council meeting in writing.
“In the GST Council, the Central government has 33 per cent of the votes and each state has only 2 per cent, so any state needs the support of 25 state governments to oppose the tax decision. But 19 out of 25 states are ruled by BJP. So one thing is clear, the decision to increase the price has been taken by the BJP state governments and the Central government,” she added.
Shrinet claimed that the middle class was passing through difficult times. “These are just two examples out of all the cases where the Prime Minister betrayed the people of India to get their votes and then stabbed them in the back following his "drown die" ideology. She said the Modi government's desperation to fill its coffers at all costs had prompted it to impose an unprecedented fuel tax, further hurting the purchasing power of Indian consumers.