{"id":215,"date":"2019-04-02T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T09:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/?p=215"},"modified":"2019-04-20T10:33:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T10:33:41","slug":"congress-manifesto-2019-charter-weaken-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/congress-manifesto-2019-charter-weaken-india\/","title":{"rendered":"The Congress Manifesto 2019 \u2013 A Charter to Weaken India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Arun Jaitley<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sitting in Opposition from 2004-14, I used to listen to the tall promises in the Congress Budgets.\u00a0 An early lesson that I gave to myself was \u201cDon\u2019t go by what is said, the devil is always in the details\u201d.\u00a0 In the little time available, I have read the 53 pages of the Congress Manifesto.\u00a0 My worst fears have come true.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The tukde-tukde Manifesto<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At point No.30, at page 35, otherwise an innocuous entry which deals with review of laws, rules and regulations.\u00a0 It repeals Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which defines and then punishes an accused in sedition.\u00a0 Even for terrorists and hardcore criminals, it underlines the principles \u201cbail is the rule and jail is the exception.\u201d\u00a0 It seeks to dilute the provisions of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA)\u00a0\u00a0 .\u00a0 After having been spurned on various occasions to have a dialogue with the separatists, who want to settle for nothing other than cessation from India, it promised to have a continuous dialogue with them.\u00a0 It promises to dilute the presence of the Armed Forces in the Valley.<\/p>\n<p>The Congress is the principal creator of the Jammu and Kashmir problem. It created a special status; it unconstitutionally brought in Article 35A.\u00a0 It rigged the 1957, 1962, 1967 as also the 1988 Assembly elections.\u00a0 This eroded the confidence of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and now its Manifesto only brings smiles on the faces of the separatists and the terrorists.\u00a0 A reference to \u201cKashmiri Pandits\u2019 and their ethnic cleansing from the Valley is conspicuously absent in the Manifesto.<\/p>\n<p>The Congress has always been soft on terror.\u00a0 Late Shri Rajiv<\/p>\n<p>Gandhi introduced TADA.\u00a0 Later the Congress revoked it.\u00a0 It revoked POTA.\u00a0 Now it wants to go further soft on separatism and terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>There is only a lip sympathy in the assault required on Maoists violence, which Dr. Manmohan Singh had described as the greatest threat to India.\u00a0 In the recent elections, as also in the case of JNU and urban Maoists, Congress and Congressmen have always flirted with the Maoists as fellow travellers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nyay bluff<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most economists have already rubbished the Congress Party\u2019s Nyay.\u00a0 Between the Centre and the States, we are already giving to the poorest 20 per cent much more than what Nyay promises.\u00a0 As the economy expands to depleting poverty, further amounts can also be increased.\u00a0 To my initial query whether it will be reworking of the existing schemes or over and above the existing, the Congress Spokesman boasted that it will be over and above.\u00a0 I went through the detailed paragraphs in point No.9 at page 19-20.\u00a0 It contains the following statements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fiscal prudence will be maintained.<\/li>\n<li>There will be pilots and testing phases.<\/li>\n<li>It will be implemented in phases.<\/li>\n<li>On how it will be funded, the Congress says that it will be funded from the future expansion of the economy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Nyay, in the Manifesto, has now become a joint scheme of Central and the State Governments thereby diluting the initial announcement.\u00a0 The State Governments may well suggest that these existing subsidies are more than what Congress promises?\u00a0 To the vexed question of what happens to the existing subsidies, the manifesto says that \u2018only merit based subsidies will continue\u2019.\u00a0 So the Centre will retain the power to say that some subsides can be subsumed, diluted or abolished since they are non-merit based while in others the number of beneficiaries reduced since with every passing year many people are moving out of poverty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Farm loan waivers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Congress does not commit to the loan waiver but says that it has done so in several States.\u00a0 If you look at the track record of Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, a miniscule effort has not even been put.\u00a0 Even the PM-KISAN is on hold in Congress States.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Public Health<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is extremely desirable that public health institutions be strengthened.\u00a0 The Congress is only giving slogans on healthcare.\u00a0 Shri Narendra Modi has implemented the Ayushman Bharat where 50 crore people get hospital treatment free.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Women\u2019s reservation in legislatures<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 2010, as the Leader of Opposition in the Upper House, I was instrumental in having the Constitution Amendment Bill passed in the Rajya Sabha where the Congress brought it.\u00a0 In the next four years, it did not press for it in the Lok Sabha.\u00a0 How can its track record be believed?<\/p>\n<p><strong>The GST<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Manifesto repeats that the Congress will try for Single Rate GST.\u00a0 Today most food items are taxed at zero.\u00a0 Aam Aadmi items are taxed at 5 per cent.\u00a0 The 28 per cent slab is almost over.\u00a0 In the next round, the two standard rates of 12% and 18% will be merged into a mid rate.\u00a0 Thus you will have, besides the non-merit goods, goods and services, taxed at zero, 5% and at about 15%.\u00a0 The Congress says irrespective of the product and the category of consumers using it, there will be one single rate.\u00a0 This effectively means that electronic goods, air-conditioners, television sets, washing machines should be taxed at the same rate as food items, chappals and coarse cloth.\u00a0 Rahul Gandhi got this wisdom from Singapore which does not have poverty.\u00a0 Both rice and Mercedes car in Singapore are taxed at 7 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>The Manifesto compromises national security and has sham and bluff promises with little detailed understanding of the subjects involved.\u00a0 It is an irresponsible document which has never to be implemented since Congress looks a certain loser.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arun Jaitley Sitting in Opposition from 2004-14, I used to listen to the tall promises in the Congress Budgets.\u00a0 An early lesson that I gave to myself was \u201cDon\u2019t go by what is said, the devil is always in the details\u201d.\u00a0 In the little time available, I have read the 53 pages of the Congress<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[237,197,236,238],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political","tag-a-charter","tag-manifesto-2019","tag-the-congress","tag-weaken-india"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamalsandesh.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}