Sitaram Yechuri fires salvo at Centre on poll promises

CPI(M) national general secretary says deteriorating scenario on international border and internal security is pushing the country into a dangerous situation

Hyderabad: CPI(M) national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechuri lashed out at the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre for betraying young people comprising two-thirds of the population with false electoral promise of creating two crore jobs every year.

The CPI (M) leader who is here to attend the two-day Telangana State CPI(M) executive committee meeting, addressing the media on Thursday, questioned whether the BJP celebrations on completion of its three years tenure in power at the Centre was about its accomplishments or failures. He said, “It could not deliver even a single electoral promise it had made during 2014 general elections.”

Yechuri said employment generation in eight key sectors in the country had dipped to 2.3 lakh during the last three years as against the promised two crore jobs annually by the BJP. “It is the lowest employment generation recorded in last eight years,” he said.

Lack of generation of new jobs, loss of existing jobs against the backdrop of an annual demand of 1.5 new jobs in the country had hit the young people seeking employment opportunities in the country hard for the last three years, he said. On rural front, he said payment of wages to about 20,000 workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) remained pending for the last three years.

The Centre on its own admission before Supreme Court had admitted that on an average about 12,000 farmers had committed suicides in the country for the last three years, and majority of farmers’ suicides were reported from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana.

“This indicates that both rural and urban employment has been in crisis for last three years,” Yechuri added.On policies front, he said one percent people owned assets equal to nearly 49 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2014. But, the same had gone up to 58.4 percent by 2016. “It reflects that while the rich are becoming richer, the poor are becoming poorer resulting in creating two countries within the country as a result of policies perused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government,” he pointed out.

Similarly, the industrial growth had come down from six percent in 2014 to 2.6 percent in 2016. Lack of demand from the manufacturing sector had recorded a lowest 63 percent banking credit off-take during the current NDA regime. Overall, performance of industrial, information technology, agriculture and other key sectors that contributed growth in the country had been reeling under stress for the last three years of the NDA government, he pointed out.

He said the death toll of armed personnel had doubled after the so-called surgical strikes inside Pakistan territory.
Similarly, the number of CRPF men who died in Maoist attacks too had doubled and the situation in Jammu and Kashmir remained volatile. “This deteriorating security scenario on international border and internal security is pushing the country into a dangerous situation,” Yechuri said.