Mumbai
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar joined former union minister Yashwant Sinha in his Rashtra Manch’s peace march against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on Thursday.
Pawar flagged off the march – Gandhi Shanti Yatra – which started at Mumbai’s Apollo Bunder, will pass through Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and New Delhi covering a distance of over 3,000 km, and is set to culminate at the Raj Ghat in the capital on 30 January – Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary.
Speaking on the occasion of the flag-off, the NCP supremo said, “They (Bharatiya Janata Party-led government) are using dictatorial policies. What happened in JNU is being opposed across the country. The government’s dictatorship needs to be answered with Gandhiji’s way of non-violence.”
On 8 January, addressing a presser, Sinha had launched a scathing attack on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, stating that the CAA was unconstitutional, discriminated against a community and was meant to humiliate the people. “Thus, the intent of this march is to force the government to repeal the CAA by a formal statement in the upcoming session and not to proceed with the NRC,” Sinha said.
At the press conference, Sinha was accompanied by former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan, ex-Member of Parliament Shatrughan Sinha and Congress leader Ashish Deshmukh.
Sinha, a former BJP member who held finance and external affairs portfolios in the Vajpayee cabinet said, “The atmosphere in India under these two (Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah) is very disturbed. There is fear everywhere. From economy to education and employment everything has taken a big hit.”
Joining in the voice of Sinha and training his guns on the BJP’s central leadership, Chavan said, “We want this ‘black law’ (CAA) to be repealed immediately.”
He added that the BJP-led government has threatened to implement the CAA despite protests and allegedly round people (who fail to prove their citizenship) up, so that they can be sent to detention centres.
“You (BJP) will send people who you think are intruders to detention camps. Where are we heading? Are we creating detention centres on the line of concentration centres which were there in (Nazi) Germany?” Chavan questioned.
Judicial Inquiry in JNU Case
The 82-year-old bureaucrat-turned-politician demanded a judicial inquiry by a sitting Supreme Court judge into the state-sponsored violence, the latest being the JNU violence.
“These perpetrators must be punished at the earliest. This trend has become a new normal in the criminal justice system of India wherein the accused are treated as victims,” Sinha said.
Comments of Sinha came a day after the registration of a case in the JNU violence issue against the varsity’s students. Calling the police crackdown on anti-CAA protesters in Uttar Pradesh ‘state-sponsored terrorism’, he said the march was going there specifically to protest against the police’s high-handedness.
PM Modi’s Economic Figures is ‘Jugglery of Numbers’
A former disgruntled BJP leader, Sinha while questioning the estimations put up by the central government on economy growth at five percent in 2019-20, said that these figures of the PM Modi are mere ‘jugglery of numbers’.
On 7 January, as per the data reflected by the government, the country’s GDP growth is seen dipping to an 11-year low of five per cent in the current fiscal, mainly due to poor showing by manufacturing and construction sectors.
“There is no credibility in the statistical department of the government. Even this 5 per cent growth is imaginary. As this does not include what has happened, the damage which was caused as a result of demonetisation and GST on the MSME and the informal sector,” Sinha explained.
Raising doubts on the ‘management’ capabilities of the PM Modi’s government to tackle the dwindling economy issues, Sinha claimed that several economists are suggesting that India is experiencing negative growth.
“There is a need for sustained effort to put things on track, but frankly, I don’t expect anything much from the government either before or after,” he said.
Sinha further said that earlier budgets were worked out in the finance ministry and noted it was ‘unprecedented’ for the PM Modi to hold pre-budget consultations.
“He (PM Modi) is talking to industrialists, and to him and her. Where is the budget being made today, I don’t know, but they have the mouthpiece who will read out the budget in the Lok Sabha (Lower House),” said Sinha.
