)
A day after finance minister P Chidambaram refuted the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) charge that the Untied Progressive Alliance (UPA) "messed up" the country's economy and asserted the "fundamentals of the economy are strong", the Congress on Tuesday sought to bolster its claims further.
"Competition for good governance can only be between UPA-I and UPA-II and not between UPA and NDA (National Democratic Alliance). You cannot substitute facts by hurling abuses in rallies and making taunts," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here on Tuesday.
While the Congress has walked the talk, the BJP is trying to fool the people with slogans, he added.
Citing figures of growth in agriculture, industry and services, Singhvi claimed NDA was a "laggard" and "even the worst performance of UPA is better than the best performance of NDA."
He said the GDP growth, which was six per cent in the six years of NDA rule, rose to 8.4 per cent during UPA-I and it was 7.3 per cent in the first two years of UPA-II, "our lowest and worst".
In agriculture, the growth rate was just 2.9 per cent during NDA's rule, while it was 3.91 per cent in UPA-I and 3.6 per cent in the first two years of UPA-II. "The growth in services sector was 7.8 per cent in NDA, 9.9 per cent in UPA-I and 8.9 per cent in UPA-II. Even in fiscal deficit, the 5.5 per cent in NDA was matched by UPA-II," said Singhvi.
On Monday, Chidambaram had conceded that only in terms of "job creation" did the UPA fare worse than the NDA. He, however, emphasised that the UPA could take credit for the fact that the unemployment rate has declined. The finance minister ascribed the fall in actual number of jobs generated to an improving gross enrolment ratio due to which more young adults are going to college and not opting for work. At the same time, a larger number of women are also not enrolling for employment.
On the other hand, unemployment rate fell from 8.2 per cent in 2004 to 6.6 per cent in 2009-10 to 5.6 per cent in 2011-12.
Launching an attack on the BJP's good governance claims and portraying the NDA in poor light, Singhvi said: "These are the supreme ironies from which the BJP and Narendra Modi are running away. People can lie and distort, but facts cannot be ignored. Rhetoric, polemic, slogans, supposed oratory skills or - as we are now told - lack of oratory skills, will not make up for facts."
Singhvi described the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Modi as a "dictator, autocrat, with a self-serving image" who has launched "the beginning of the end of BJP".
