FM more interested in Uranus, Pluto than India's economy: Cong

Nnew Delhi: Hitting out at Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress on Wednesday said that she is more interested in Uranus and Pluto than in steering the country's economy towards recovery.

Addressing a press conference a day after the government released its inflation data, Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said that the finance minister was busy tweeting pictures from NASA's webb telescope rather than explaining to the country how she planned to rein in inflationary trends.

Sitharaman had on Tuesday retweeted images unveiled by NASA from its new powerful space telescope.

Accused the Modi government of polarising society and creating disharmony instead of tackling rising inflation, unemployment and depreciating Rupee, Vallabh said, "With such data on rising inflation, it was expected that the finance minister would come out with a plan on how to tackle inflation, but she has different priorities."

"She has an interest in Pluto, Jupiter and Uranus. Unfortunately, our finance minister is showing the way to Pluto, Uranus and Jupiter and is unable to show the way forward to our economy," he told reporters.

"It has become very evident in the last eight years where the focus of the BJP government has been. Polarisation and disharmony have taken a front seat whereas distressing issues such as rising inflation, unemployment and depreciating Rupee are nowhere on its agenda. The country witnessed the highest unemployment in the last 45 years," he alleged.

Vallabh also alleged that the BJP has brought about a "doom with 7s", with retail inflation at 7.01 percent, unemployment at 7.8 percent and Rupee depreciated 7 percent in the last six months vs the US Dollar.