‘Cong sought Pak help’
POLITICAL RESOLUTION Reaching out to voters on second day of its convention, party says choice is between stability and instability
Congress leaders sought Pakistan’s help to remove Modi, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
NEW DELHI: Congress leaders sought Pakistan’s help to remove the Prime Minister, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said while moving a political resolution on the second-day of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s twoday national council meeting. She did not elaborate.
A “comical alliance”, Mahagathbandhan of “desperate, contradictory and opportunistic political formations” is being attempted to take on the Prime Minister, BJP and NDA, the resolution said. It added that the alliance has neither an agenda on what it will do for India and its people, nor a leader, and that the glue holding it together is a shared hatred for Narendramodi.
The BJP said the India of 2019 is not the India of the 1990s where the longevity of the Union Government comprising these desperate and opportunistic elements ranged from four months to one year. “The choice today is between stability and instability: effective governance or desperate mal-governance; a well-respected leader like Narendramodi being opposed by an opportunistic alliance whose leader is unknown,” read the resolution. The party appealed to people, especially first-time voters, to participate in the coming elections with full enthusiasm and “support the vision of Modi to make India a great country”.
The resolution said the crackdown on corruption has been one of the biggest changes under the Modi government . The previous Congress-led UPA government set new records in terms of corruption scandals, the resolution added, and in comparison, there is not one allegation of corruption against Narendramodi government. “That is why in a desperate attempt to put at least one blemish on the clean governance provided by Narendramodi, the Congress Party concocted the lies about Rafale. The falsehood propagated by the Congress party in this connection was also repudiated by the Government of France,” the resolution said.
Sitharaman asked BJP workers to create awareness about the government’s achievements, especially that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has provided a “corruption-free” five years and that no major terror attack has taken place during this period.
Sitharaman added that under Modi’s leadership, “the defence forces conducted surgical strikes across the border and instead of commending them, the opposition wanted proof”. “We showed them the proof. And it was the same opposition -- some leaders of the Congress -- who went to Pakistan seeking help to remove Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the kind of dirty politics that the Congress plays.”
The resolution listed out several welfare programmes of the Modi government and said all this indicates the fulfilment of the promises made by the party and Prime Minister. Swachch Bharat became a mass movement under the Modi government, it said.
The resolution also spoke about the constitutional status given to the National Commission of Backward Classes and the 10% reservation to economically weaker sections. It pointed out that the last has been achieved without affecting the existing reservations for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes.
“The speed and scale with which transformative changes are happening in railways, expansion of airports and air services, National Highways and rural roads and other infrastructural projects is also creating large scale employment opportunities,” reads the resolution, adding that the PM has focused upon programmes to create employement opportunities in rural and urban areas. It claimed that 152.6 million small and very small businesses have got ~7.29 lakh crore as loans out which nearly 50% of beneficiaries have taken loans for the first time. This by itself created employment opportunities for millions, it said.
Analysts have previously questioned some of these claims, pointing out that there is no record of such job creation and that the average loan amount, based on these numbers, works out to under ~50,000.
The resolution also said the average speed of rural road construction has gone up from 69 km per day in 2013-14 to 134 km per day in 2017-18 with the expenditure on road construction increasing from ~32,483 in 2013-14 to ~1,16,324 in 2017-18. From the fragile five, India is the sixth largest economy in the world today, the BJP resolution said.
The resolution also said demonetisation targeted the ageold problem of black money. The government took courageous decision such as the de-registration of 3.26 lakh shell companies, the resolution said, adding that the number of Income Tax payers who filed return in 2013-14 doubled from 38.2 million to 68.6 million in 2017-18. Income Tax collections, which were only ~6.38 lakh crore in 2013-14 increased to ~10.02 lakh crore in 2017-18.
Reacting to the resolution, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said, “2019 is not a battle between a ‘majboor sarkar (helpless government) and a majboot sarkar’ (strong government). It is a fight between ‘dictatorship and democracy’. It is a struggle between ‘bhashan (speech) and prashasan (administration)’ and it is going to be a test between jumlas qua an impeccable track record of service, which Congress has delivered over the years.”