On Wednesday the opposition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cornered the congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in a Parliament for its failure to contain inflation, even as the Government inexplicably put up a weak defence.
The attendance was thin in the treasury benches and several senior leaders including Congress party President, and UPA Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi and Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi, skipped the first day of debate in Loksabha in a seeming indication that the Government was resigned to its circumstance.
Sonia Gandhi was indisposed according to the Congress Party officials. According to the experts, the decision of the Government to virtually give upon a debate as politically contentious an issue as inflation was clearly an unusual one. On Thursday, the two day debate is expected to be concluded and the same would be followed by a vote. The senior BJP leader and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha blamed the government's policy missteps for stoking inflation, leading the opposition's aggressive charge.
Accoding to Sinha, the inability of the government, on one hand, to contain slippage in the fiscal deficit has created a huge liquidity overhang and on the other, it was refusing a release surplus foodgrain stocks into the market to dampen prices. In fact, Sinha made a case for the Government to release 25 million tonnes of foodgrains into the market. Less than 20 Congress MPs were present in the House at one point of time during Sinha's speech. When the Union Law Minister, Salman Khursheed, offered the defence of the Government, it did not result in the dramatical alteration of the situation.
While initiating the debate on price rise, Sinha moved a motion calling upon the Government to take immediate and effective steps to check inflation that would bring relief to the common man.
And as a reply to the debate, Khursheed said that the price rise is as much as a concern for the Government as it is for the opposition. He also stated that, as compared to the earlier, the word economy is very well different today and now it is not possible to implement the policies in one country which will not cause an impact upon the other economies.
By,
SM
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