NEW DELHI, 9 Jun: The Congress on Monday released a booklet to mark Narendra Modi’s 11 years at the Centre, highlighting stagnated growth rate, rising hunger, and his “unfulfilled promises.”
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh in a post on X said that the booklet, ’11 Saal, Jhoothe Vikaas ke vade’, commemorates “some of the biggest lies of this Government.”
Addressing a press conference, AICC research department head Rajeev Gowda, who prepared the booklet, alleged, “This government is very good at fake news and propaganda. It is our job as the opposition to get people to know this grim reality.”
He said that to expose the BJP’s promises the party is releasing two sets of documents.
The booklet, ‘Ek Aur Baar Jumla Sarkar’, he said, looks at the promises made by the BJP in its 2024 manifesto, and has since made.
He said that nearly a third of Indian children are suffering from malnutrition, even as the BJP insists on Viksit Bharat.
The Congress leader also alleged that the Centre’s claim that India added over 5,000 defence items to the indigenisation list was also not true.
“Sadly, 40 percent of the items listed for indigenization have not been indigenized as of now.
India remains one of the top importers of defence rather than a producer and exporter.
“If you look at ‘mission mode DRDO projects’, 23 out of 55 have been delayed, and the share of R&D in our defence budget is only 5.45 per cent,” he said.
Neither is the claim that India is the fastest-growing large economy true, he said.
“This is true, but what rate are we growing? Are we able to encash our demographic dividend? Any economist will tell you that if we grow below 8.5 percent a year, we are sacrificing the future of crores and crores of our youngsters because we will not have enough growth, jobs and opportunities that are required to just fulfil the target – the great jumla – 2 crores jobs per year,” he claimed.
He said India’s growth is 6.5 percent over the last year, which is the lowest rate after the Covid period.
He said the fixed capital formation has come down to 32.4 percent, which is an 11-year low.
“There is another legacy: the glaring inequality. The share of wealth in India’s top 1 percent of people is 40 percent. And the bottom 50 percent have to make do with just over 3 percent,” the former Congress MP said, adding that this is not the economy the country wants.
Gowda said that at top universities, 5,000 teaching posts were vacant as of November 2024 and 35 percent of faculty posts at AIIMS-Delhi and the new AIIMS have over 40 percent faculty vacancy.
He sought to blow a hole also into the Centre’s UDAN scheme and the ease of living standards for middle-class India in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
“More than 50 percent of approved routes never took off by 2023. Of the 619 routes under the UDAN scheme, only 323 are operational. After Rs 4,500 crore spent, UDAN is still struggling to fly,” he said.
Gowda said 142 crore trees were planted under the ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’, but the highest tree cover loss has been recorded under the BJP government. (PTI)
