Cong playing dangerous game of social repolarisation in Guj: Jaitley

10/12/2017

NEW DELHI, Dec 9: Attacking Congress over its campaigning in Gujarat, Union Finance Minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the grand old party has opted for a divisive agenda of social repolarisation for which it would pay very heavily in the Assembly polls.
The State paid a heavy price for such mis-adventures in the 1980s and would be very reluctant to repeat this experiment after having liberated itself from caste wars, Mr Jaitley said in its facebook post.
He said the Congress was also deceiving voters and self by promising reservations beyond 50 percent which has been judicially prohibited and the party was also making other promises which were fiscally and constitutionally impossible.
”A promise of reservations beyond 50 percent has been made by the Congress and the PAAS to the people of Gujarat. This act of self-deception is a constitutional impossibility which will never be judicially permissible,” Mr Jaitley said.
”Having no model of development, the Congress Party manifesto is one of fiscal impossibility. The total revenue earned by the State is about Rs 90,000 crore per annum.
The Congress promises a tax waiver of Rs 20,000 crore. This will bring down the effective revenue income of State to Rs 70,000 crore. To this may be added the Central devolution and the borrowings which under the FRBM Act have a three percent cap. All these constitute the committed liabilities of salaries, pensions, social and developmental expenditure. There is no surplus money left after this committed expenditure,” he said.
He said the Congress manifesto promises an additional bonanza of Rs 1,21,000 crore in terms of populist programmes. It doubles the expenditure while reducing the income, which is a fiscal nightmare. Even a fiscal miracle does not permit this.
”The two important limbs of the Congress manifesto comprise of one a constitutional impossibility and the other a fiscal impossibility. The Congress Party can well afford this risk since its victory is a political improbability,” Mr Jaitley said.
”The first distinct aspect of Congress Party’s campaign is that it has clearly demolished its own State-level leadership and outsourced both its leadership and issues to those who had conventionally nothing to do with the Congress Party,” the senior BJP leader said.
There is not a single State leader who is touring the State for the campaign, Mr Jaitley said.
He said the second limb of the Congress campaign has been that the Gujarat model of development does not exist.
”This claim has been conclusively demolished by the recent data that Gujarat is the only State in India whose GSDP grew by 10 percent during the period 2012-2017. Gujarat grew at least two percent faster than the nearest growing State that is Madhya Pradesh.
A double digit growth rate is unheard during the period of economic downturn. Even the Chinese new normal during this period has been 6.5 percent,” the senior BJP leader.
He said a seven percent plus growth rate made India the fastest growing among the major economies for three years. For a large State to grow at 10 percent is unprecedented.
The fact that this growth rate has been sustained for five years in a row is an evidence of the success of the Gujarat model, which the Congress wants to wish away.
The next important limp of the Congress campaign is a promise of reservations over and above 49 percent. The Supreme Court, since 1992, has repeatedly reemphasised that the net total of all reservations cannot exceed 50 percent. States which have attempted to breach this cap have faced constitutional resistance.

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