PM making excuses, says BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of making an excuse of "lack of political consensus" for "governance deficit" of his government and claimed that NDA-ruled states were in the forefront of economic development.

BJP President Nitin Gadkari

Inaugurating a meeting of party chief ministers and deputy chief ministers to discuss the ‘impact of economic slowdown' party president Nitin Gadkari launched a scathing attack on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and said it had "no leader, no answerable person."u00a0u00a0"They don't have vision or determination. Rating agencies have downgraded the credibility of the country due to this government's economic policies. The UPA government has lost its credibility," he said.

Gadkari said the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was going down while "governance deficit and policy paralysis, GD-PP, is constantly increasing" and economic reforms have been "pending for months."u00a0"The Prime Minister makes excuses of lack of political consensus for no development," he said, referring to Manmohan Singh's Independence Day address to the country.

"We have asked many times how this reason can be held responsible for everything from lack of infrastructure to agricultural development. The state governments have maintained financial discipline but our PM has not been able to do the same for the country," Gadkari said.u00a0He said when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) left office in 2004, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 17.8 percent but it had gone up to 68.05 percent. "This has made India the worst amongst the BRIC countries," referring to the four-nation grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Addressing media persons later, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar gave the main credit for the country's present growth rate to BJP-ruled states. "The present 6 percent GDP rate is maintained because of the growth in BJP-ruled states. All our states have GDP of 10 per cent and above," he said.u00a0Gadkari also said NDA-ruled states had performed better than those ruled by UPA in handling unemployment and had spent more money on education.

"With regard to the increase in state domestic product, the BJP-ruled states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Jharkhand are ahead in the first six states," he said.u00a0The day-long meeting discussed response of NDA-ruled states to economic downturn, deficit of rain and ‘discrimination' from the central government.