BJP will collapse on its own: Cong

SHILLONG, OCT 7: Congress leader and former union external affairs minister Salman Khurshid today criticized the BJP-led NDA government at the centre for it’s under performance and predicted that the government will collapse on its own.

“I don’t think they (BJP) have done anything in strategic matters, security matters, social relations, law and order and and the economy that they can boast about,” Khurshid told reporters here on Saturday.

He went on to say – “The BJP may be with a little more time may fall by itself but we can’t take a chance as they are very nefarious and they will pull out all stocks they have very vicious politics, they have divisive politics and they will try to do everything that is possible to mislead the people into believing that their continuing in power is good for the country but I don’t think it is.”

Asked, the former union minister said that an objective coordination between the opposition political parties is necessary to take on the BJP in which the Congress has a major role play.

Though he admitted that since 2014, the party has not been able to show any spectacular success, he however said that Punjab was a very good success, Delhi for the AAP (not Congress) but it is a defeat for the BJP.

“So there is serious thinking that a coordinated plan is necessary people say alliance, grand alliance etc but right now there is no real prospect of that having come about although common meetings are taking place where leaders are meeting each other,” he said.

Taking a dig at the performance of the three-year old Narendra Modi-led government, Khurshid pointed out at the sorry state of affairs in the implementation of the new tax regime – Goods & Services Tax (GST).

“Please tell me why GST which came two months ago and yesterday changes have been made. But why should the mistake be in the first place. It is because you are in a hurry of announcing it.The software was not ready, the hardware was not ready. We didn’t have the capacity for all the kind of filings that had to happen and then they didn’t objectively assess what level of the rates has to be applied etc – We were critical of it, many people were critical of it, the economists were critical of it,” he said.

Khurshid further alleged that the reason for the necessary changes in the GST was  because elections are coming as the BJP now realizes that the trading community and many other people were unhappy.

Lambasting the BJP government for the mess it has created, he said, “Now, you can’t run a government by changing everyday, you must think seriously. My own view about this government is that economics of this government is absolutely zero.”

He also warned that it will be a painful exercise to fix this mess and said, “We have come crashing down and this is not something which you will fix overnight.This will take a lot of time to fix and when the economy falters it is a painful exercise to fix it. You can’t just simply say alright we change two people, we transfer some and now will fix it… it doesn’t happen like that.”

The former union minister also alleged some of the schemes announced by the prime minister are routine schemes of the government, which was given during the Congress regime under specific names.

“All he (Modi) does he changes the names and the same schemes runs,” he said.

Stating that the new schemes introduced are not thoughtout schemes, he claimed that under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan introduced by Modi, not one single inch of land, water, river and city has been clean.

“Nobody can say that intend to clean is a bad thing, a scheme to clean is a bad thing but the point is how are you going to clean India, you have to apply your mind,” he said adding “For cleaning you must know that taking a broom and do cleaning of a road is not cleaning.”

He said that you have to know where the garbage will go, where is the landfill adding that in Delhi, the landfills are sliding down and killing people.

“So where is the landfill and where is modern technology which is going to convert garbage into bricks and modern technology which will happen without fumes coming out to the city. All these things require planning you cannot do it overnight,” Khurshid added.

By Our Reporter