Tearing into the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) election manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls, the Congress on Monday said important issues like jobs, GST, black money and demonetisation were missing from the whole announcement exercise. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the BJP leaders — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party President Amit Shah and Ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj — did not speak even a single word on those issues.
He said the BJP should start packing as people would reject its false promises and throw the party out of power.
Surjewala also questioned the BJP-led government on its earlier promises made in the manifesto for the 2014 elections.
“You promised two crore jobs every year, which translates to 10 crore jobs in five years. In reality, during these five years, the number of jobs has actually reduced by 4.7 crores. And it’s not something that I am saying, but what has been said by the government’s own NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation) data,” he said at a press conference here.
The Congress leader added that while the BJP had promised to bring back Rs 80 lakh crore in black money and deposit Rs 15 lakh in each Indian’s bank account, “in reality, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya looted Rs 1 lakh crore of the taxpayer’s money and fled the country right under Modi’s nose”. He also questioned how the BJP intends to double farmers’ income considering that at the current rate of agricultural growth of 2.9 per cent, it would take 28 years.
“Modi also promised to turn India into an economic power. But in the last five years, he has buried the country under debt,” Surjewala said, adding that the BJP-ruled government borrowed over Rs 27 lakh crore between 2014 and 2018. The BJP earlier released its election manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah.
Among other things, the manifesto pledged zero tolerance towards terrorism, promised pension for small and marginal farmers and 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state Assemblies through a constitutional amendment.