Uproar in BJP over Swami’s jibes

A party leader claims MP ‘trying to malign Cabinet minister’ on economic front

A section of BJP leaders, particularly those belonging to the camp of a senior Union Cabinet minister, is baying for party MP Subramanian Swamy’s blood for savaging the government on the economic front. However, it’s not only Mr Swamy who has been critical of the government’s economic policy and the way demonetisation scheme was implemented. The Economist in it’s latest issue also talked about the Union government’s failure to create jobs.

While this particular section in the BJP, apparently “loyal” to the senior Cabinet minister, was trying to mount pressure on the party high command to “caution” Mr Swamy, the other section seemed to be in agreement with this maverick BJP MP.

A senior BJP leader, who refused to be identified, claimed that in the pretext of attacking the government on the economic front, Mr Swamy “was trying to malign a minister concerned.”

In an interview to a TV channel, Mr Swamy not merely said that the “economy is in a tailspin” but hinted that a handful of leaders were trying to block him from getting any crucial role. Mr Swamy indicated that these leaders ranging

from “0 to 3” while “one” among them is the “worst” and seemed to be against him. “I have been kept out of practically everything,” he said.

Mr Swamy who was in favour of demonetisation during the 2014 elections felt that the scheme was “not implemented properly” and he had predicted that “demonetisation was going to fail”. What had upset particular section of the saffron leaders, close to that “one” minister, was Mr Swamy’s claim that if corrective measures were not taken, the country could head for a “major depression”, “banking sector might collapse” and “factories could close down”.

As some of the BJP leaders continue to seethe against Mr Swamy, the Economist in it’s latest issue talked of the government’s failure to create job opportunities. The Economist wrote that “slow economic growth, a decline in investment rates, the shock of economic reforms, a long term decline agricultural employment and a faulty education system have combined to reduce the proportion of Indians who hold proper jobs”. The magazine claimed that “just to keep unemployment in check, India needs to create some 10 to 20 million jobs a year”. On the economic front, it claimed that the growth has “steadily slowed since 2016”.

Talking about the National Skill Development Corporation, the

Economist claimed that it hard trained “some 557,000 workers” and “by its own count only 12 per cent of these trainees found jobs”. It may be recalled that the during the recent reshuffle, PM Narendra Modi had dropped national skill development minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy.

◗ A particular section in the BJP, apparently ‘loyal’ to a senior Cabinet minister, is trying to mount pressure on the party high command to ‘caution’ Mr Swamy