Congress manifesto for Gujarat is a Constitutional and fiscal improbability: Arun Jaitley

On the day of the first phase of Guajarat polls, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday criticised the Congress Party and said that it has no model of development and its manifesto is one of “fiscal impossibility”.

“The two important limbs of the Congress manifesto comprise one – a constitutional impossibility and the other - a fiscal impossibility. The Congress Party can well afford this risk since its victory is a political improbability,” Jaitley wrote in a blog post titled “The Myth of Congress Campaign in Gujarat”.

He also challenged the Congress’s criticism of the Gujarat model of development sand said that recent data showed that Gujarat is the only State in India whose GSDP grew by 10 percent during the period 2012-2017.

“The fact that this growth rate has been sustained for five years in a row is an evidence of the success of the Gujarat model, which the Congress wants to wish away,” he stressed.

Noting that Gujarat’s total annual revenue is about Rs 90,000 crore, he said that the Congress has promised a tax waiver of Rs 20,000 crore and additional bonanza of Rs 1,21,000 crore in terms of populist programmes.

Jaitley said that all this will lower the effective revenue income of Gujarat to Rs 70,000 crore leaving no surplus money after committed expenditure.

“It doubles the expenditure while reducing the income, which is a fiscal nightmare. Even a fiscal miracle does not permit this,” he said.

Describing his blog post as an analysis of the Congress campaign of 2017, the Union Finance Minister said the Congress Party’s campaign showed that it has demolished its own State-level leadership and outsourced both its leadership and issues to those who had conventionally nothing to do with the Congress Party.

“There is not a single State leader who is touring the State for the campaign,” he said.

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