Former prime minister Manmohan Singh has slammed the government over freezing of dearness allowance, asserting that it was not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and armed forces personnel.
The Finance Ministry on Thursday, 23 April, froze inflation-linked allowance for 50 lakh central government employees and 61 lakh pensioners till June 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis. However, DA and dearness relief (DR) at current rates will continue to be paid, it said.
"We should be on the side of people whose dearness allowance is being cut. I sincerely believe it is not necessary at this stage to impose hardships on government servants and also on the armed forces people," Singh said during the Congress' consultative group meeting whose video was released by the party on Saturday, 25 April.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi also slammed the government over the issue, saying the problem was with the government going ahead with the Central Vista redevelopment project.
“You are taking away money from the middle-class, you are not giving money to the poor people and you are spending it on your Central Vista.”Rahul Gandhi
Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said, "When you (government) have not cut back expenditure on the bullet train, Central Vista development, those are the programmes which should be first put on halt before you halt people's dearness allowance."
The Centre last month approved the land use change for execution of its ambitious Central Vista redevelopment project in Lutyens' Delhi with the issuance of a notification by the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.
Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said it would have been fine if the money was being transferred to migrant labourers.
"But you are continuing with the new Parliament House, new building for ministers, new house for PM, you are continuing with zero cut on expenditure of the government, which could save you close to Rs 2-2.5 lakh crore. But you are denying relief to your armed personnel, to your pensioners, to your government servants," he said.
‘Insensitive, Inhumane’
On Friday, 24 April, Rahul Gandhi had taken to Twitter to say that it was “insensitive and inhuman” to freeze dearness allowance, and also referred to the bullet train and the Central Vista beautification project.
"It is insensitive and inhuman on the part of the government to cut the DA of central employees, pensioners and jawans who are serving the public while fighting coronavirus, instead of suspending the bullet train project and the Central Vista beautification project of lakhs of crores (of rupees)," Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.
The Congress, last week, had constituted a consultative group with former prime minister Singh as its chairperson, to deliberate on "current concerns" and formulate views and policy of the party on important issues.
Besides Singh, Gandhi, Surjewala, KC Venugopal and Manish Tewari, former Union minister Jairam Ramesh, Praveen Chakravarty, Gaurav Vallabh, Supriya Shrinate, and the party's social media head Rohan Gupta are also part of the panel.
(This story has been edited for length and clarity.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)