Modi's silence shows he backs intolerance, says Prithviraj Chavan

Pune: Former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan on Thursday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on controversial issues, including the release of the movie Padmavati. He also criticised the Modi government for its failure on the economic front.

“The Prime Minister’s silence on the ongoing controversy over Padmavati, the suspicious death of the CBI judge heading the Shoharabuddin killing against Amit Shah, killings of people over allegedly carrying beef and the murder of journalists like Gauri Lankesh, shows that he approves of intolerance. If he takes a definite stand, then all this would stop,” said Mr Chavan during a media interaction at Patrakar Sangh in Pune.

He also criticised the government policies which were causing loss of jobs instead of their creation.

“The GDP of the nation has gone down to 5.7 from 9.2 in three years. Over 20 lakh jobs were decreased in the six months following demonetisation. This proves that all the ‘brave’ decisions like GST, by the central government have been  a failure.”

When asked about India’s increased ranking in the Moody’s ratings, he said, “Ranking going up is good. But we have improved to 100th from 134 and that is not too good. Besides other rating agencies like Standard and Poor, have not increased our rating. Last year, Arvind Subramanian, economic advisor to the Prime Minister, had heavily criticised the Moody’s rating.”

Mr Chavan added, “India is heavily dependent on its cash economy with almost 97% of business being done in cash. Despite that, the government took the decision of demonetisation freezing all this businesses. That leads to job losses. According to the Mumbai-based Centre for Monitoring Economy, India lost 20 lakh jobs in six months following this decision. The government’s Skill India, Start Up India, Smart City programmes launched with big advertisements, could not create jobs and are only announcements.”

He also pointed out that chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had announced an investment of eight lakh crores in the state a year ago. “But when I asked the government about how much investment has come and how many jobs are created, nobody has an answer. Like this, all the projects announced by CM are still on papers.”

He said, “There was no need to create a complete new Samrudhi Corridor joining Mumbai and Nagpur that promises the travelling distance will come down to six hours. This is not possible as speed limits in India are limited to 100kmh. With this rate, nobody can cover this much distance in six hours. They could have widened the old way joining the two cities. But now we know many government officials have bought land along this new route. I think the decision was taken for them.”

Mr Chavan said neither the state nor the central government were open about policies and decisions. “They still have not told said why the decision of demonetisation was taken. There is no clarity over digital economy. And Modi’s silence on intolerance is like an approval for perpetrators.”