Year of disappointment: Cong on Modi 2.0's first anniversary

New Delhi: On the first anniversary of the second term of the Narendra Modi government, the Congress has said that it was a year of disappointment, disastrous management and diabolical plans.

Commenting on the Modi government's anniversary, AICC general secretary KC Venugopal and party's communications in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala said that at the start of the seventh year of Modi government, the country stands at a crossroads.

"Its citizens exhausted by the weight of this government's sins, ineptitude and callous insensitivity to the widespread suffering. Over the last six years, India witnessed a steady increase in the politics of distraction and false noise, to the point that it has become a defining mainstay of Modi government's administrative style. While it served the political interests of the BJP, it came at an unprecedented economic and social cost to the nation," they said.

"The Centre gave extraordinary promises beget extraordinary expectations. But as we shall see, even the most ordinary and mundane expectations of keeping a country running were beyond the capabilities of this government which promised 'so much' and delivered 'so very little'," Venugopal said. The Congress leaders further said, "Modi came to power promising two crore jobs a year, but India witnessed the highest unemployment rate in the last 45 years."

"GDP growth has been sliding continuously since the last 21 months. Fourth-quarter of FY'2020 GDP is at an abysmal low of 3.1 per cent and likely to be revised at 2 per cent," they told reporters.

Venugopal further added that six years of Modi government witnessed 32,868 "bank frauds" involving public money to the tune of Rs 2,70,513 crore.

The Congress leaders said that the country now has the highest income inequality in the last 73 years. Citing a report prepared by Oxfam, the party said that one per cent of the population controls more than 45 per cent of the country's wealth. Venugopal said profiteering at the cost of the farmer and the surging farm input costs have made agriculture unviable.

Surjewala also demanded that a virtual session of Parliament be convened immediately to discuss pressing issues and the due process be set in motion for holding of meetings of various parliamentary committees. "When 'pradhan sevaks' become autocratic, the first casualty is the democracy. In fact, democracy is under attack by the Modi government which got elected through this democratic process," he said.

"Sadly and tragically, Indian Parliament has been sidestepped under the garb and guise of COVID-19 pandemic."

He said standing committees and select committees have been side-lined and given a go-by. Even grassroots democracy of panchayats, zila parishads and municipal councils and corporations have been virtually non-functional with the bureaucracy ruling the roost and the entire country is being ruled directly by the central government.