Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Thursday mocked Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying that she has called upon planets to the rescue of India’s economy.
Chidambaram’s remark came two days after Sitharaman had retweeted photos of the cosmos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12.
The former Union finance minister said that he was not surprised to see Sitharaman “tweeting pictures of Jupiter, Pluto and Uranus” on the day when inflation and unemployment were reported at 7.01% and 7.8% respectively.
“After giving up hope in her own skills and the skills of her economic advisers, the FM [finance minister] has called the planets to the rescue of the economy,” Chidambaram wrote in a tweet. “To begin with, she should appoint a new CEA: Chief Economic Astrologer.”
India’s retail inflation fell marginally to 7.01% in June from 7.04% in May, government data showed on Tuesday.
Despite the decline in numbers, the price rise indicator remained above the Reserve Bank of India’s 6% ceiling for the sixth month.
Meanwhile, the country’s unemployment rate was at 7.83% in April from 7.57% in March, according to the data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy released on May 3.
The data showed that the unemployment rate in April was the highest in Haryana at 34.5%, followed by Rajasthan at 28.8%, Bihar at 21.2% and Jammu and Kashmir at 15.6%.
On Wednesday, Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh also mocked Sitharaman over the state of the economy.
“She has an interest in Pluto, Jupiter and Uranus,” Vallabh said, according to NDTV. “Unfortunately, our finance minister is showing the way to Pluto, Uranus and Jupiter and is unable to show the way forward to our economy.”
He had also accused the Narendra Modi-led Central government of polarising society and creating disharmony instead of tackling rising inflation, unemployment and the depreciating value of the rupee.
“It has become very evident in the last eight years where the focus of the BJP government has been,” Vallabh said. “Polarisation and disharmony have taken a front seat whereas distressing issues such as rising inflation, unemployment and depreciating Rupee are nowhere on its agenda. The country witnessed the highest unemployment in the last 45 years.”
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