Congress research Powers LoP Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive Budget Speech
New Delhi, July 30:
Citing security challenges related to China and Pakistan, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge urged the Centre on Tuesday to take Parliament into confidence and alleged that in its “false bravado and hollow propaganda”, it has forgotten that it also has the responsibility to protect India’s strategic interests.
Kharge said new developments at India’s two-front security paradigm have yet again exposed the Narendra Modi government’s rank apathy.
“Is it not true that China has built and operationalised a bridge connecting the north and south banks of Pangong Lake, which allows it to have a strategic dominance in the sector, close to our LAC?” the Congress chief asked in a post on X.
“Is it not a fact that China has started constructing a new village along the LAC in the Demchok sector, which along with Depsang, is a point of standoff, post-Galwan?” he asked.
New developments at India’s two-front security paradigm has yet again exposed Modi Govt’s rank apathy.
Kharge Cites Security
On Pakistan, Kharge asked whether it is not true that since Prime Minister Modi took oath, there have been 25 terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in the Jammu region, where 15 soldiers or security personnel have been killed and 27 injured.
“Is it not a fact that Pak-sponsored terrorism has now spread to 3 new districts of Jammu and Kashmir — Doda, Kathua and Reasi and the share of civilian deaths in such incidents across Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has been disproportionately high –in fact, the highest in about two decades?” the Congress president asked.
These are extremely serious and sensitive issues of national security and need a united and collective approach, he said.
“Parliament must be taken into confidence by the Modi Govt, but in its false bravado and hollow propaganda, it has forgotten that it also has the responsibility to protect India’s strategic interests,” Kharge said.
Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive speech in the Lok Sabha was powered by some background research from his team which called out the bluff behind the budget proposal of 1 crore internships for unemployed youth in the country.
The problem of high unemployment in the country had been flagged by Rahul Gandhi who gave a guarantee to provide the first job for a year to all qualified youth during the Lok Sabha campaign.
According to party insiders, the top 500 companies in India employed only 1 percent of the 56.5 crore workforce which worked out to 72 lakhs.
“Hence it was not possible for the 500 companies which employed 72 lakh people to take 1 crore interns,” AICC functionary BM Sandeep Kumar told ETV Bharat.
“The finance minister said they will nudge the companies to take interns but the fact is that over the past 10 years around 41 companies were coerced through ED and CBI raids to donate funds to the tune of Rs 2500 crores to the BJP as revealed by the Electoral Bonds data,” he said.
Further, the central government completely ignored the problem of joblessness as around 10.3 crore youths had given up looking for jobs and the informal sector which employed 90 percent of the country’s workforce was struggling. Also, that around 72 percent of the youth did not pursue higher education and around half of the graduates were unemployable.
The party insiders further highlighted the anomalies in the central government’s approach to dealing with the problem of unemployment by saying that as compared to the previous UPA II government, the Modi governments had been reducing expenditure on the education sector.
“Over the past years, the UPA II government prioritized the education sector and accordingly spent an average of 4.73 percent of the budget on education. In the last 10 years the Modi government only reduced it from 3.8 percent of the budget in the first term, 2.9 percent in second term and now 2.5 percent in the third term,” said a senior AICC functionary.
According to party insiders, the party’s background research further showed that the informal sector lost around 16.45 lakh jobs during the period 2026 to 2022 and the manufacturing sector was worst hit during the Covid period losing 9 percent of business and 15 percent workers.
“If the informal sector was growing at the UPA rate, there would have been 63 lakhs more businesses employing 1.6 crore more people. Contrast this with government data that showed that between financial years 2020 and 2023, the profit before tax of the companies grew four times,” Congress media head Pawan Khera told ETV Bharat.
He further said that the budget had not made any provisions for the Caste Census as promised by Rahul Gandhi and that even the regular census 2021 had been ignored by the central government which led to the LoP leveling the charge that the NDA regime was only focused on the rich and the influential and was not evenly distributing the goodies ‘Halwa’ among the majority of the people.
