Subramanian Swamy punches hole in BJP’s election manifesto, points at two ‘blunders’

New Delhi, Apr 10
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy took to Twitter Wednesday to point at two “blunders” in the party’s election manifesto.The BJP, which released its ‘Sankalp Patra’ on Monday, vowed to double the income of farmers by 2022. Swamy points out that doubling farmers’ income by 2022 would mean “24 per cent per year growth rate”, which is pretty difficult to achieve. The growth rate can “at best be 10% per year,” he says.He further says that India’s comparable Gross Domestic Product is third largest and not sixth, as claimed in the election manifesto.“I have sent word to Rajnath to revise the Manifesto on two blunder: a) Doubling of farmers income by 2022 means a 24% per year growth rate which is unbelievable given past world record, best can be 10% per year. b)India’s comparable GDP is 3rd largest not 6th,” tweeted the 79-year-old economist and Harvard University alum.Union Ministers Rajnath Singh heads the 20-member manifesto committee of BJP. Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan are some of the other members of the committee.Apart from setting milestones in agriculture, BJP’s manifesto for the high-stakes general election starting April 11 promised to implement the NRC in different parts of the country to push out infiltrators and zero tolerance to terror while reiterating its pet causes — construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and scrapping of Articles 370 and 35A, dealing with Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. It also aims to make India one of the top three economies in the world. The manifesto has been prepared with the participation of six crore people, it is far-sighted and practical, the party said in a statement.