Publish names, addresses of those who got jobs: Cong tells PM

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 25

On the eve of the third anniversary of the BJP government at the Centre, the opposition Congress on Thursday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi publish the names and addresses of people who got jobs under his rule, a white paper on the state of Indian economy and GDP numbers as per the old and the new series.

“We dare the PM to make public the details of people whom his government gave jobs during the three years of the BJP rule at the Centre. The PM had promised two crore jobs per year and we had only 1.5 lakh last year. Let the government say who got the jobs, and what their addresses are,” senior Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma said on Thursday in what the Congress described as a curtain-raiser of its attack on the saffron rule.

Sharma, also deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, said the Indian economy was sluggish on all major indicators of growth and the growth was “flat”.

“I am being generous when I say the growth is flat. If the government publishes old and new series GDP numbers which we dare them to publish, the truth will be out. We also demand the government to publish a white paper on the state of economy, with investment rate, bank saving rate and non-agricultural bank credit off-take all plummeting in the past three years,” said the Congress leader in a scathing criticism of PM Modi’s rule.

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The Congress accused the BJP of opening the vaults of the treasury to further the PM’s personality cult. “Close to Rs 1,500 crore is to be spent on the propaganda blitz called MODI fest. Government money will be used to build the personality cult. What are they celebrating? As far as the poor and vulnerable are concerned, there is nothing to celebrate,” Sharma said, describing ministers as “rubber stamps and PM’s cheerleaders”. Cabinet ministers are helpless and are simply cheerleading the PM, he said.

The Congress was most critical of the internal security situation calling the PM’s Pakistan policy a “diplomatic disaster”. “Every now and then, the government uses videos to mislead people,” Sharma said questioning the recent move of making public a video of the Army attack on Pakistani posts.

When asked if he was challenging the Army’s action, the Congress leader said, “I am not criticising the Army’s action but it is the government’s responsibility to make public its stand on Kashmir which has seen more deaths of jawans and officers than before. The PM is yet to apologise for his December 25, 2015, pit stop in Lahore and for what followed, including Pathankot and Uri attacks. We don’t want the truth of Kashmir to be lost in the act of videos being released by both the sides.”

Distancing the party from its leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s move to meet the Kashmiri separatists, Sharma said the Congress had always been against engagement with the “unelected and unelectable in the Valley”. Sharma was alluding to the Hurriyat when asked if the Congress supported the government’s move to disengage the Hurriyat from Kashmir talks.

Sharma said India’s image as a pluralistic nation had taken a beating under Modi. “The world is looking at images of mob-lynching, vigilantism, Pehlu Khan and Jharkhand killings,” he said.

The Congress over the next few days will send top leaders across India to counter the BJP’s MODI fest, with Sharma saying that “falsification of facts” is the hallmark of the BJP government.