In a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha criticised the Centre for its economic policies, accusing them of ‘greed and misleading’ the public.
In a column for NDTV titled ‘The Week in Lies of the Modi Government,’ Sinha addressed various issues in a bid to “expose some of the hollow claims of the Modi government.”
On Sky-Rocketing Prices of Diesel and Petrol
Beginning his argument that crude oil prices were at a high of $105 per barrel during the second term of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Sinha said the new government was lucky to have been in power at at time when prices declined to as low as $26 per barrel.
However, prices soon began to soar and today it is $75 per barrel.
Stating that if the burden of high costs was split three-way between the government, oil companies and the consumer, Sinha argued that the benefit of low prices should’ve been evenly shared.
However, this was not so, he alleged.
Sinha further said that instead the government was raising taxes for its own benefit, while also “allowing oil companies to raise prices at the cost of the consumer.” Meanwhile, Sinha notes that the Finance Secretary has also announced that the taxes would not be revised any time soon.
The Demonetisation and Bank Fraud Debacles
Slamming the prime minister for having claimed that demonetisation will ‘break the back of counterfeiters’, Sinha, quoting a report by the Financial Intelligence Unit of the government, alleged that the incidence of fake notes that have been deposited in banks has gone up from 4.10 lakh times in 2015-16 to 7.33 lakh in 2016-17.
Similarly, pointing towards banking frauds, which have also seen a rise, Sinha said that the “total amount involved in frauds had crossed Rs 90,000 crore in the last four years.”
The Rapid Decline in Employment
Citing another report by recruitment firm CIEL HR, that claimed that over 80,000-90,000 jobs had been lost owing to a decline in number of operators in the telecom sector, Sinha again hit out at the government which was allegedly attempting to prove otherwise.
Stating that even economists contested the government’s claims of using EPFO data, Sinha says:
But who can stop the government from telling pure lies?
Further, Sinha alleged that the government is now planning to stop employing the Labour Bureau from compelling data on employment, as the on-ground surveys on employment generation “did not present a flattering picture”.
On Cost and Time Overruns
Quoting yet another report put out by the ministry of statistics and program implementation, Sinha said that the cost of 356 infrastructure projects had overrun by 2.19 lakh crore.
Finally, taking one last pot shot at the reshuffled BJP-PDP cabinet, Sinha hit out at the newly appointed Deputy Chief Minister Navinder Gipta, who said that the Kathua rape was a “minor issue”.
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