In Himachal, Rahul Gandhi flays PM over economy

New Delhi: It’s corruption versus sluggish economy in poll-bound Himachal Pradesh. Fighting to retain power in the state, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the economic front in an attempt to blunt the BJP’s attempts to woo voters by highlighting alleged corruption under the Congress government.

Mr Gandhi, kicking off the party’s election campaign with a rally in Mandi district where he announced Virbhadra Singh as the party’s CM face again, claimed that the Modi government’s economic policies were responsible for “causing unemployment”.

“There are no jobs, the Prime Minister has hurt the economy by first implementing demonetisation and then introducing a seven-slab GST,” said Mr Gandhi.  

Mr Modi visited Himachal three days ago and targeted the state Congress on corruption issues by saying that the entire “government is on bail”. The BJP has been targeting Himachal chief minister Virbhadra Singh who is facing corruption charges and is currently out on bail.

Hitting back at the Prime Minister, Mr Gandhi on Saturday raked up the issue of unemployment and alleged that the NDA government had failed to fulfil the promise of providing jobs to two crore people.

“The ground situation is that 30,000 job-seekers are being added every 24 hours but only 450 persons are getting jobs a day while our competitor China is giving jobs to 50,000 people every day,” said Mr Gandhi.

The Congress V-P also criticised the hasty implementation of GST and said that in Gujarat alone 30 lakh young men and women have lost their jobs due to GST.

Mr Gandhi also settled the party’s leadership debate in the poll-bound state by backing chief minister Virbhadra Singh.

“Virbhadra Singhji has done tremendous development in Himachal Pradesh as six-time chief minister. He will be the CM for the seventh time. He will have full backing of the party,” said Mr Gandhi.

In the run-up to the Assembly polls, expected around December, state Congress chief Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had emerged as a challenger to the chief minister who, at one stage, had threatened not to contest elections if Mr Sukhu was not removed.