The Government and the BJP were involved in a slugfest today over as to which regime had handled the economy better. The trigger was Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s reported speech praising the Vajpayee-led NDA Government for its management of the economy.
Addressing the annual convention of Overseas Friends of BJP in Florida via video conference, Modi had asked if the Congress would agree with his view that the growth rate during the Vajpayee Government was 8.4 per cent and that it was now 4.8 per cent.
Aggressively countering this, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram wondered why Modi would “stage a fake encounter with facts”, in a veiled reference to the Ishrat Jahaan fake encounter case, in which some Gujarat police officials have been arrested.
In a statement, Chidambaram referred to Modi’s speech and said nothing could be further from the truth. The Finance Minister said GDP growth rates for the six years of the Vajpayee Government were: 1998-99: 6.7 per cent; 1999-2000: 7.6 per cent; 2000-01: 4.3 per cent; 2001-02: 5.5 per cent; 2002-03: 4 per cent; 2003-04: 8.1 per cent.
The average for the six-year period was six per cent and the average for the last five years was 5.9 per cent, Chidambaram’s statement said. “By contrast, the average for UPA –I (2004-09) was 8.4 per cent,” it said and added that the average for the first four years of UPA-II had been 7.3 per cent.
Chidambaram said the two worst years since the turn of the century were 2000-01 and 2002-03. “If there was a golden period of growth, it was the five-year period under UPA-I,” the statement said. Ultimately, facts will prevail, Chidambaram added.
The BJP reacted to Chidambaram’s statement by quoting the Economic Survey of 2004-05 (presented by the UPA-1 Government), which put the 2003-04 growth rate at 8.5 per cent.
Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh was the first one to attack Modi on the statement. He said Modi was “faking figures too”.
The BJP quickly came to the defence of its Prime Ministerial candidate. The party said it was Chidambaram’s statement that was factually incorrect.
“When the NDA Government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee came to power in the 1998, our growth rate was 4.8 per cent. …when the NDA demitted office in May 2004, it left an extraordinary growth rate of 8.5 per cent on a very sound foundation of the Indian economy,” said the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, Ravi Shankar Prasad.
jigeesh.am@thehindu.co.in