NEW DELHI, Sept 11: A day after the G20 Summit concluded, the Congress attacked the Narendra Modi Government for over-shooting the budget allotted for the summit and urged him to at least now turn his attention back to the more pressing issues facing the country like inflation, unemployment and Manipur violence.
In a detailed post in Hindi on X, party president Mallikarjun Kharge said the people have started paving the way for the BJP-led government’s departure in 2024 general elections. “Modi ji is trying hard to conceal the truth. But the public is only interested in hearing the truth and not the distractionary issues,” he said.
Mr. Kharge pointed out that the price of a plate of food has increased by 24% in August and the unemployment rate is at 8% with the young population of the country facing a bleak future. “The Modi Government’s misgovernance has led to corruption, CAG has exposed BJP in its several reports including the latest on Jal Jeevan scam of ₹13,000 crore in Jammu and Kashmir which was exposed by a Dalit IAS officer, who has been tortured for exposing the case,” he wrote.
Flagging the revelations made by the former RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya about how he resisted the government’s pressure to transfer ₹3 lakh crore from the bank’s treasury, Mr. Kharge underlined the alleged corruption under the regime. He also accused Mr. Modi of turning a blind eye to both man-made and natural tragedies that the country has been facing. “There has been a fresh outbreak of violence in Manipur. In Himachal Pradesh, there has been an unprecedented disaster but Mr Modi is not declaring it as a national disaster,” he added.
The party’s general secretary (Organisation) K.C. Venugopal also denounced the government for going overboard with expenditure for the summit. “The allocated budget for the G-20 Summit was ₹990 crore. The BJP Government spent ₹4,100 crore. After the COVID-19 pandemic, governments the world over have curtailed their spending on public events. For context, Indonesia spent less than 10% of India’s expenditure – a measly ₹364 crore for the Bali Summit,” he said in a post on X.
He said while the government cannot ensure cheap fuel or compensate the farmers reeling from crop loss or release adequate funds for rehabilitation of flood-devastated Himachal Pradesh, it has overshot the budget for this image-building exercise by ten times. “No number of beautification drives can hide the economic mess this government has spread across the country. We don’t need to look any further than the flooded Bharat Mandapam to know how public money has gone down the drain,” Mr. Venugopal said.
The G-20 Leaders’ Summit was held at the Bharat Mandapam International Exhibition-cum-Convention Centre on September 9-10. Ahead of the summit, the Congress had accused the government of running an “election campaign” using the upcoming G-20 meeting in India to divert people’s attention from real issues.
(Manas Dasgupta)