Congress accuses govt of weakening institutions

New Delhi: Congress today accused the government of weakening institutions, including RBI, and attacked it for reducing budgetary allocations for various social sector schemes like housing, midday meal and Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).

Congress member K V Thomas also slammed the government for demolishing the 68-year-old Planning Commission set up by Jawaharlal Nehru and questioned it on the fate of the Food Security Act as well as vacancy of the post of Chief Information Commissioner.

BJP countered it, with its member Nishikant Dubey saying that the government was working for the benefit of poor and farmers on the basis of "reality". He attacked the erstwhile UPA government, saying it had been "misleading the nation" and implementing policies which failed to improve the condition of the poor and villagers.

Initiating a debate on Finance Bill in Lok Sabha, Thomas said, "The government is weakening institutions, one after another." He referred to the "demolition" of the Planning Commission "which had given direction to the country" for 68 years.

"Contribution of Jawaharlal Nehru cannot be blindly blamed for the economic direction the country took," the Congress member said.

Contending that the Narendra Modi government had taken over when the economy had a "strong base", he said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had himself quoted the observations of IMF which said the "forecast of India's economy is either upgrade or remains the same".

Contradicting this, Dubey said Thomas was wrongly quoting Jaitley, as the Finance Minister had cited the positive observations of IMF made in 2015 while in 2014, the global body had given a negative forecast.

He said the UPA government had destroyed the environment for investments and the Modi dispensation was trying to improve the conditions for investments.