White Paper hiding ‘dark truths’ of country: Congress MP KC Venugopal

New Delhi, February 10

The Congress on Saturday said the White Paper was brought by the government to hide the “dark truths” of this country and divert attention from the burning issues of unemployment, price rise, farmers’ stress and the state of the economy.

Congress leader KC Venugopal alleged in the Rajya Sabha that the government has used this as a defence against addressing real issues. He also accused the government of using the Bharat Ratna award for political purposes.

Venugopal asked why the finance ministry did not even mention the impact of demonetisation in the White Paper and why it does not make any mention of unemployment rate, poverty and rupee value.

“This is actually not a white paper, but a paper hiding the dark truths of this country,” he said in the House.

He said while BJP is giving new guarantees, one needs to recall guarantees given by the Prime Minister on two crore jobs, bringing back black money stashed abroad in 100 days, transferring Rs 15 lakh to every citizen’s bank account, doubling of farmers’ income by 2022 and achieving USD-five-trillion economy by 2023.

He even claimed that during the UPA rule, they had done a better job in managing the deficits. An average Indian’s income grew much faster when Manmohan Singh was the prime minister, he said, adding that the net foreign investment was 1.2 per cent of the GDP during the UPA regime, which is currently 0.8 per cent.