Congress CMs allege step-motherly treatment

Stepping up their attack on the Narendra Modi government, the Chief Ministers of nine Congress-ruled States accused the Centre of displaying a step-motherly attitude towards their respective governments.

Following a meeting of Congress CMs at the AICC headquarters here with the party high command, they said Modi doesn’t even give them appointments to meet him.

Mocking at Modi’s slogan of cooperative federalism, they said instead the Centre favours “corporate federalism,” which is against the interests of States.

A resolution adopted at the meeting, chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, said deliberate attempts are being made by certain sections of the ruling establishment to disturb social peace and communal harmony.

The meeting rejected “boastful claims, exaggerations and downright falsehoods” of the NDA government on its achievements over the past year.

Sonia said that in terms of style of the new government, there is unprecedented centralisation of power and authority, the deliberate by-passing of parliamentary procedures and practices, threats to civil society and warnings to the judiciary.

“The Prime Minister has broken with tradition and taken domestic politics to audiences abroad. Boastful claims, exaggerations and downright falsehoods characterise most of his statements. His election promises are now being dismissed, in the words of one of his own key colleagues, as chunavi jumlas ,” she said.

Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi said the government has not just reduced the allocation for various social welfare schemes, but also destroyed the nature of schemes such as MGNREGA and RTI. “MGNREGA is a rights-based programme. RTI is also a rights-based programme — this means if somebody demands it, the government has to give it. I think this is certainly being questioned. So whenever we see that, we must defend it,” he told the assembled Chief Ministers.

The meeting expressed grave concern over the Centre abdicating its responsibility in human and social development and the substantial cuts in the allocations for essential programmes in areas like education, health, women and child development, drinking water and sanitation, rural roads and livelihoods and agriculture and cooperation.

It called upon the government to restore the allocations to these critical programmes.

The meeting also questioned the abolition of the Planning Commission and said there are several shortcomings in the new GST Bill and those needs to be addressed before it finally becomes law. It demanded that the Centre continue with the North-East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy 2007 that was “unilaterally scrapped” in December 2014.

Senior Congress leader AK Antony told reporters after the meeting that efforts are being made to deny the UPA government due credit for the progress made by the country during its rule in 2004-14.

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