New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra slammed the Central government in the Lok Sabha Tuesday for the 'poor performance' of the government across multiple sectors. "Who's the Pappu now?" she asked after highlighting every grim statistic under the Modi regime.
Moitra started by quoting the author Jonathan Swift. "As the vilest writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers. And it often happens that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work...Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it," she said.
"The government and the ruling party coined the term 'Pappu' and used it to denigrate, to signify extreme incompetence. Let me use the next few minutes to point out what the data and the statistics tell us as to who the actual Pappu is," the TMC said as she began her fiery speech.
Referring to the recently published National Statistical Office (NSO) numbers released by the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, she said that the manufacturing sector has shrunk while the industrial sector recorded negative growth rates. She also added that around 2 lakh people renounced Indian citizenship this year.
Moitra took a swipe at the BJP over its defeat in the recent Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, saying the saffron party president could not hold on to his home state. "Who is the Pappu now?" she asked. Slamming the central government on the abuse of 'agencies', Moitra said that the ED has recorded a pathetic conviction rate of only 0.5 percent despite the high number of cases registered by it. "Is the ED's (Enforcement Directorate) job only to harass people? Where are the results?" she asked.
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Despite demonetization, the circulation of fake currency did not stop, instead, it doubled, Moitra said. "Cash is still king," she said and added that even six years after the exercise, no target has been achieved. Moitra also slammed the government on its prioritization of nitrogenous fertilizers which is leading to the deterioration of agricultural soil as well as the 'anti-poor' bias in the Supplementary Demand for Grants.
Speaking about BSNL being provided a viability gap funding of Rs 18,000 crores for rural wireline operation, the firebrand MP said if the government of India keeps giving BSNL viability gap funding, it is also giving it free spectrum worth Rs 30,000 crores.
"...then why not make BSNL free roaming rural for everybody. If I am not a BSNL user, I am an Airtel user, I am paying for BSNL's free spectrum. It is not only BSNL subscribers who are paying for it. So if Airtel has a poor network in a rural area, why can my phone not latch on to BSNL? Taxpayers are paying for it, making it free for all in rural areas," she said.
Commenting on the recently held assembly elections, the TMC MP said that the president of the ruling party could not even hold on to his home state even after high-decibel campaigning in the hill state.
Moitra also highlighted the fact that the central leadership has also not bothered to publicly denounce Baba Ramdev's sexist (a certain jari booti Baba, she described) remarks on women's attire in public in the presence of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's wife. "You do not have the moral clarity to call right from wrong," she said while talking about releasing convicted life-term prisoners just before elections.
Strongly objecting to the politics of 'soft Hindutva', Moitra said that the country needs an elected government with "hard morality, hard legality and hard economics." She ended her speech in the Lok Sabha with a witty statement asking people to exercise their franchise in elections wisely: "Sawal ye nahi hai bastiyan kisne jalayi, sawal ye hain ki pagal ke haath me machis kisne di." (The question is not who burnt down the colonies, the question who handed over matches to a mad man).
