Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday rejected the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claim that the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are already decided, saying the picture is still out and the interim budget seems to be the final budget of the Modi government.
Tharoor also criticized Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for describing GDP as ‘governance, development and performance’ and said that under this arrangement ‘G’ stood for ‘Government Intrusion and Tax Terrorism’. ‘D’ stands for ‘Demographic Betrayal’ and ‘P’ stands for ‘Poverty and Rising Inequality’.
In an interview to ‘PTI-Bhasha’ at PTI headquarters, Tharoor termed the interim Union Budget as “disappointing” and said the issue of unemployment was completely missing from the Finance Minister’s speech.
He claimed that the government gets ‘F grade’ (fail) in terms of improving the lives of the common man. Tharoor said, “Inflation, especially the rise in food prices, is so shocking that the bottom 20 per cent of the population is unable to buy them in the market, whereas they could have bought a year or two ago. This is the reality of the life of the common Indian, which is why the government wants people to vote out of pride for Ram Mandir or to vote out of pride for the alleged attack on Pakistan over the Balakot, Pulwama incidents.’
The former Union Minister said that BJP had got similar success in 2019. He said, “This time Ram temple is going to be an issue and there is no doubt that Abu Dhabi temple will be included.
Obviously governments are not elected to do this, governments are elected to improve the lives of common people. Did this government do this? I would say that on that particular criterion it (the government) has completely failed.”
Asked about Sitharaman saying the government will present a detailed roadmap towards the goal of a ‘developed India’ in July and the BJP claiming the outcome of the 2024 elections is already decided, Tharoor said, “The picture is still out.” Is.”
The Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram said that votes cannot be counted before voting. He stressed that there is still time for the opposition to work together and put economic realities before the people. Tharoor said that this interim budget seems to be the ‘final budget’ of the Modi government.