Govt's populist schemes come under fire

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday accused the UPA government of hoarding money and food grains to launch populist schemes in the next Budget, keeping an eye on the 2014 general elections.

“The government has become the largest hoarder in the country. They (government) are hoarding liquidity and grain. What is the idea? You want to accumulate these things to give a push to populist schemes next year for the elections,” Ananth Kumar of the BJP charged during a debate on supplementary demands for grants in the Lok Sabha. “The chairman of the State Bank of India recently said his bank was flush with liquidity.

Of the Rs 1 lakh crore, the bank could disburse only Rs 40,000 crore. For the Rs 60,000 crore, there were no takers as the interest rates were high,” he said, adding that the government recently brought out a policy to “extract” more money from the people by increasing contribution to the provident fund. “This has reduced the take-home pay of a population already reeling under inflation.”

“When the buffer stock required is only 14 million tonnes, the UPA government is keeping reserves of 42 million tonnes, which is three times the requirement,” he said, blaming the government’s policy for food inflation. The BJP leader also criticised the government for increasing the cap on subsidised LPG cylinders to nine an year at this juncture, alleging that M Veerappa Moily discussed it outside Parliament with an eye on the Gujarat elections.  “We had raised the issue three months ago, but there was no response from the government. Why did Moily not say anything about it before? Because they were eying the Gujarat elections. He violated all norms of parliamentary propriety,” he charged.