Reacting sharply to the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s acerbic remarks on the BJP led government and its economic strategies, Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri remained defiant. In her latest post on X, Kharge lambasted the Modi government as full of “lies, deceit, fraud, plunder, and propaganda,” over broken political promises like employment assurance, management of inflation, and the position of India in the Global Hunger Index. As the storm raged on, Kharge raised questions on GST, corruption, and problems of crimes against the SC/ST.
In response, Puri used social media to put record that the Modi government has come out with several measures in its bid to expand its inclusive policies which are changing people’s lives and its vision to make India a developed country by 2047. He listed successes such as enabling 24 crore Indians to come out of multidimensional poverty, building 11 crore toilets; providing 12 crore connections for water; and giving 10 crore free connections of LPG. Puri reflected on the key policy overhauls such as GST, Startup India, IBC and the PLI scheme as some of the key growth fronts of India.
He also defended the government’s control over fuel prices, saying that while international oil prices increased between 40 to 70%, the price of petrol and diesel car remained fixed. To which Puri replied that Congress’s oil bonds during the UPA-2 era which was costly India 3.2 lakh crore had ended.
In Karnataka too, Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar has taken PM Modi head-on for maligning Congress party’s rule in the state. On X, Modi accused Karnataka’s Congress-led administration of indulging in ‘more internal politics and looting than the actual work of building’. Defending its real GDP growth rate of 2023-24 on Tuesday, by using MoSPI data, the state’s opposition chief Shivakumar replied to Modi by saying that it is higher than the country average of 8.2%.
These assertions was further supported by Karnataka’s IT Minister Priyank Kharge, who alleged that instead of using proper details of the nation’s financial situation, Modi resorted to ‘disinformation’.
As both the organizations go on with the exchange of words the economic debate between BJP and congress will also be more and more pronounced with each trying to condition the Indian public through statistic on the development path of India. This tussle for unveiling the economic policies represents the core battle for proprietorship over India’s economic discourse in both the national and regional political fields.