Taking an aggressive position on its performance on the economic front, the Congress today came out with a fact-sheet to negate the BJP’s “false propaganda” on key economic issues.
Through facts and figures, Sonia Gandhi’s party has tried to show during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls that the country has done better under the UPA rule.
Refuting the BJP claim that the “Congress has mismanaged the economy and it is in recession”, the Congress reiterated that it was technically and substantively incorrect to state that the economy had slid into recession. It also pointed out that while during the NDA regime, the GDP rate was 5.8 per cent, the UPA rule had pushed it up to an average of 8.5 per cent during the last five years.
The party also tried to show that contrary to the BJP’s allegations of “step-motherly attitude” towards the Opposition-ruled state, the Manmohan Singh government had increased the central funding by 63 per cent to states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Using the Reserve Bank of India figures, the Congress pointed out that these four states received Rs 1,17,901 crore during the NDA rule, while the UPA regime gave Rs 1,91,725 crore to them.
The ruling party also took on the BJP on three other issues — “hobbling the organised and unorganised sectors”, “fiscal indiscipline” and “neglect of agriculture sector”.
To counter the BJP’s claim in the agriculture sector, the Congress said that during the party’s tenure, the agriculture growth rate increased to 3.1 per cent against the NDA’s 2.3 per cent. It also boasted about raising the minimum support price (MSP) for wheat and paddy and the farm loan waiver scheme.
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The Congress fact-sheet came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made it clear in Guwahati that he was not interested in continuing the “slanging match” between him and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani. As the PM wanted to focus on substantive issues, the party didn’t waste any time to launch the political attack on the BJP on the economic front, considered a crucial poll issue given the ongoing global slowdown.
“We thought it is the time to bring back the debate on substantive agenda,” party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said, releasing the fact-sheet.
Natarajan, however, evaded the question on how the party was going to tackle the issue of job losses.