A day after criticising Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the government’s mismanagement of the economy, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha said he was not asking for Jaitley’s resignation. Speaking to NDTV on Thursday, he said he was simply pointing out that as far as decisions related to the country’s economy goes, the buck stopped with Jaitley.
On Wednesday, in an article in The Indian Express, Sinha had attacked the government for the decline in India’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate and described the Centre’s demonetisation exercise as “an unmitigated economic disaster”. The former finance minister had said that despite low global oil prices, Jaitley had failed to use the extra finances to revive the economy.
Sinha’s interview on Thursday comes after his son, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, dismissed articles “drawing sweeping conclusions” on the Centre’s economic decisions, in a column. “I have seen Jayant Sinha’s article. He’s doing his dharma, I’m doing mine,” Yashwant Sinha told NDTV.
He said the government was in denial about the state of the economy. “The decline is not technical, it is real and it is here to stay,” he said, adding that there were BJP members at various levels who were not being allowed to raise such concerns.
Yashwant Sinha asserted that the government could take steps to ensure that the economy was brought back on track, including reviving stalled projects and looking into non-performing assets of banks.
Earlier in the day, he said he had asked to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi a year ago, but has yet to get an appointment.
On being called frustrated and disgruntled, Yashwant Sinha said, “This is the easiest and cheapest accusation to make about any one.”
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