Classmate who does no work, but shows up to take all credit: Congress' dig at PM Modi over UPI

New Delhi: A day after French President Emmanuel Macron lauded India's UPI architecture, the Congress on Friday said its initial conception happened under the UPA government in 2012-2013 and likened Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a student in a group project who doesn't work, but shows up to take all the credit.

The opposition party said that bereft of the capacity to come up with groundbreaking ideas, Modi is happy cutting ribbons, "blabbering ludicrous acronyms", cursing the Congress and "stealing credit".

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday, Macron began his address by lauding India's journey in the digital space.

"Ten years ago, a street vendor in Mumbai could not open a bank account. No address, no papers, no access. And today, the same vendor accepts payments on his phone, instantly. Instantly, for free, from anyone in the country," he said.

"That is not just a tech story, that is a civilisation story. And India built something that no other country in the world has built, a digital identity for 1.4 billion people. A payment system that now processes 20 billion transactions every month," Macron had said.

Modi on Thursday emphasised that the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ensured seamless online transactions even in difficult circumstances and played a major role in bridging the digital divide.

In a post on X on Friday, Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said, "We all remember that one classmate in a group project - does no work, but shows up to take all the credit. That is Narendra Modi." "Look at the UPI architecture in India that was appreciated by Emmanuel Macron -- the initial conception of UPI happened in 2012-2013, under a group led by Nandan Nilekani, then chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India," Khera said.

A UPA government-appointed committee recommended a mobile-based digital payments infrastructure in December 2013, he pointed out.

"The Immediate Payment Service, developed by National Payments Corporation of India in 2010, laid the technical backbone. NPCI began designing the core architecture that would become UPI in 2013-2014," Khera said.

"Bereft of the capacity to think of groundbreaking ideas, Modi is happy with cutting ribbons, blabbering ludicrous acronyms, cursing Congress and stealing credit," the Congress leader said.