Cong’s economic agenda is divisive and seeks to derail India’s growth: Deora
Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha member Milind Deora has alleged that the Congress, which once ushered in economic reforms, currently has a divisive economic agenda that aims to derail India’s economic growth trajectory.
In an interview with PTI, Deora said that Congress was a centrist party but has “moved very far to the left” and is talking about policies that are communist and socialist in nature and have failed all over the world, when the party should be talking about policies that can stimulate innovation and investment.
The economic reforms of 1991 and Congress policies of the previous sixty or seventy years have facilitated the creation of businessmen and wealth creators, noted Deora, who left the grand old party in January this year and joined the Shiv Sena under leadership of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Eknath Shinde.
Now the Congress party is trying to “insult them, criticize them,” the former Union minister alleged.
“It is a symptom of Congress moving away from its own legacy,” Deora further alleged.
“The Congress had an economic agenda to take India forward. Today, I find that Congress has a divisive economic agenda that aims to derail India’s economic growth trajectory, which when India faces a really interesting and exciting tailwind with much of the economy The world wants to differentiate itself from China and invest in India,” he said.
“We should take advantage of that,” said Deora, who was a Union minister in Manmohan Singh’s government.
Deora, who was a Lok Sabha member from South Mumbai from 2004 to 2014, said many people in the Congress, including former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, will not subscribe to the party’s current economic vision.
It is the Congress that introduced economic reforms in 1991 under the leadership of then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, he said.
“But the Congress backed down and shunned these reforms,” the Shiv Sena MP said.
Milind Deora and his father – former Union minister late Murli Doera – share a unique distinction as both were Mumbai Congress presidents.
The Shiv Sena MP also lashed out at the Congress for opposing the abrogation of Article 370 (which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir) and said the country’s founding fathers, who were also members of the Congress, had introduced as a temporary provision.
Article 370 was a temporary provision in the Constitution, but Congress “deviated from it,” he said.
The Congress fought against caste politics but today the party is advocating for it, Milind Deora said, referring to the opposition party’s assurance of a caste census if it comes to power.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: April 17, 2024 | 11:19 am IST