Will PM reply to Manmohan, Rahul charges on economy?

Mumbai: With the economy suddenly catapulted onto the political centre-stage for Maharashtra elections, all eyes are on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Mumbai on Friday evening for his response to the recent Congress charges on the country’s economic situation.

As the election date approaches close (Oct. 21), the Congress attempted to change the political debate from political to economic issues with party leader Rahul Gandhi firing the first salvo.

At his Mumbai rally last Saturday (Oct.13), Gandhi declared that the economy under the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was very strong, flourished and had earned the admiration of the whole world.

“Under the UPA government, the Indian economy was very strong and could challenge even the US economy. The whole world praised our economic management. Now, under the present government, what is the status..?” Gandhi demadned.

Though the BJP kept mum in Maharashtra, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman hit back at the Congress from the USA by attributing the present economic ills to the tenure of the former PM Singh and ex-Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan.

On Thursday, Singh himself travelled to the country’s commercial capital and at a packed media conference, delivered a no-holds barred eye-opener on the status of the economy, both in the state and nation.

Packing tough words in his soft voice, Singh targeted Modi’s pet theme of India achieving a Five Trillion Dollar economy by 2024.

In a strong dosage, Singh said that for reaching this goal by 2024, the country would need a 10-12 percent GDP growth, but under the BJP government, the growth rate is declining steadily year after year.

Singh also said that merely “passing the buck to the Congress for India’s problems would not work” and the present government should have learned and provided credible solutions to the issues confronting Indian economy in its five-and-half years.

He said that the Modi government “talks about a lot of things… two crore jobs will be provided”, etc, but exactly the opposite is happening.

“Now, people are losing jobs… The government believes in headline management and not taking concrete steps to resolve the problems,” Singh had said sharply.

Modi will address his first and last rally in Mumbai, the country’s commercial centre and economic engine and it remains to be seen whether he comes up with a counter-salvo to the Congress charges.- IANS/QUAID NAJMI