Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of saying false things about the UPA government and claimed that his speech in the Rajya Sabha was only focused on criticising the Congress.
Speaking about PM Modi’s reply to the debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address in the Rajya Sabha, Kharge on Wednesday said the Prime Minister did not talk about price rise, unemployment and economic inequality.
“It was not a reply to the Motion of the Thanks on President’s address, it was only about him (PM Modi) cursing the Congress. He only spoke on what the Congress did. I believe that these people (BJP) don’t consider the Constitution, they never participated in Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March, they never participated in Bharat Chhodo Andolan and are teaching the lesson of patriotism to the Congress,” Kharge said.
Congress chief further said that NDA itself means No Data Available government.
“The government does not have any data. “NDA means ‘No Data Available’. They have no data. They can’t speak the truth, they keep lying,” Kharge said.
“Census 2021 has not been conducted, there is no employment data, there is no health survey. The government hides all the statistics and spreads lies,” he added.
Mentioning the unemployment rate during the UPA government, he said, “Modiji said countless false things about the UPA government. I want to ask the unemployment rate during the UPA rule was 2.2 per cent, why is it at a 45-year high in your tenure?”
The Congress chief said during the 10 years of the UPA rule, the average GDP growth rate was 8.13 per cent, and asked why is it only 5.6 per cent during the current government’s tenure.
He further mentioned that according to the World Bank, India became the third-largest economy in 2011. But PM Modi is not ready to accept this.
“We took 14 crore people out of poverty in 10 years. They (BJP) are spreading lies by circulating edited speeches. No matter how many lies are told, the data is always available,” he added.
He said the progress that India has made in digital transformation, its foundation was laid by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) under the Aadhaar-DBT-bank account framework.
“We had already enrolled 65 crore Aadhaar cards till 2014 and direct transfer of subsidies had started under DBT-PAHAL. Under Swabhiman Yojana, we had also opened 33 crore bank accounts for the poor,” Kharge noted.
“Modiji said something about PSUs (public sector undertakings). Let us remind that your ‘Sell and Loot’ policy led to full/half/or partial privatisation of 147 PSUs till April 2022,” he said in a post on X.
There are 30 lakh posts lying vacant in the government, the Congress leader said, adding that most of the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) posts are vacant and nearly three lakh posts are lying vacant in five ministries — railway, steel, civil aviation, defence (without troops) and petroleum, he said.
“You talked about Eklavya schools but did not say that 70 per cent of the teachers in these schools are on a contract basis. It is unfortunate that the gap between our exports and imports has increased by three times in the last 10 years and despite knowing this fact, the government does not accept it as a problem and has not taken any corrective measures,” he said.
Replying to the debate on the motion of thanks in the Rajya Sabha, the Prime Minister made an all-out attack on the Congress and said the party which targets the BJP-led government over its handling of public sector undertakings “destroyed HAL and Air India”