BJP will come back with 300+ seats in 2019, says Union minister Piyush Goyal at HTLS 2018

The NDA government is on top of the economic situation despite having inherited an economy in a shambles and in the face of a recently deteriorating external environment, Union minister Piyush Goyal today. He also asserted that his party, the BJP, will win big in next year’s Lok Sabha elections.

“The BJP will come back with 300 + seats and the NDA will get a two-thirds majority,” the Union minister for railways and coal said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Rejecting criticism by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who spoke at the summit earlier in the morning, Goyal said, “We have absolutely not lost the narrative on the economy...we inherited an economy in a shambles and PM Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have successfully steered the economy to strength.”

The government, he said, had since coming to power in 2014 successfully steered the economy, built forex reserves, brought down double-digit inflation and started acting on the mess left behind in the banking sector.

Goyal said the rupee had depreciated by just five rupees, or 7 per cent, in the last five years.

“This is the slowest depreciation.... show me any period which had such a golden run as far as currency was concerned,” the minister who is tasked with turning around India’s largest public transporter and increasing output of the precious fuel.

First Published: Oct 05, 2018 15:21 IST