Government was clueless, and therefore the President's address was silent: Congress leader P Chidambaram

Taking a dig at President Ram Nath Kovind's address on Friday, Congress leader P Chidambaram termed it to be a "tiresome repetition of old slogans and old cliches" and that "government was clueless, and therefore the President's Address was silent".

"The President’s Address is the first policy statement of the government in the new year. I looked for indications on how the government intended to tackle the grave economic slide. Alas, I found none," tweeted the former Finance Minister.

"All that we heard was tiresome repetition of old slogans and old cliches that have lost all meaning in the last few years," he said.

"Sadly, there was not a word on the macro-economic situation. Not a word on lost jobs, increasing unemployment and rising consumer price inflation. Not a word on the closure of thousands of industries, especially in the SME sector," said the Congress leader.

"The government is clueless, and therefore the President's Address was silent, on dwindling investment and rising number of stalled projects. The future of the manufacturing sector is bleak," he pointed out.

"The government’s re-statement of its policy on Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh shows that it has learnt nothing in the last 6 months and is determined to heap injustice and humiliation on the 75 lakh people in the Kashmir valley," he said.

"Likewise, the government has obstinately reiterated its hard line position on CAA unmindful of the protests by students, youth and women in every state of India. The government's rejection of the democratic resistance will only intensify the protests," he said over the anti-CAA protests across the country.

The President lauded the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act as "historic" in his address to a joint sitting of both houses of Parliament, on Friday.