Criticism of Arun Jaitley’s performance as Union Minister of Finance came from an unusual quarter – senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha.
In a column published in The Indian Express, Sinha wrote that he would be “failing his national duty” if he didn’t speak of the “mess” made of the economy by Jaitley.
Praising Jaitley’s talent and drawing attention to his indispensability in the Cabinet despite him losing the Lok Sabha election in Amritsar, Yashwant hinted that perhaps the Finance Ministry required Jaitley’s undivided attention.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said that Congress is happy that Yashwant Sinha has echoed their criticisms of the government.
Sinha wrote that despite the depressed global crude oil prices that allowed the government the luxury to allot crores of rupees to several stalled projects, the money wasn’t utilised well.
Further, he pointed out the failing health of the Indian economy, which has been affected by a “badly implemented” GST. Acknowledging that demonetisation was not responsible for the deceleration of the economy, he said it “added fuel to fire.”
In his column, Sinha also wrote that the government brought about a new method of calculating the GDP, but when calculated by the old method, it comes down to 3.7 percent growth or less.
Concluding the column, he wrote:
Economies are destroyed more easily than they are built. It took almost four years of painstaking and hard work in the late nineties and early 2000 to revive a sagging economy we had inherited in 1998. Nobody has a magic wand to revive the economy overnight.
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