Congress ready to launch attack on United Front in Parliament

George Iype in New Delhi

To take its attack on the United Front government to the Budget session of Parliament the Congress party on Wednesday armed all its MPs with a critique that questions the coalition regime's economic polices and targets.

The critique prepared by senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee, terms the economic targets of the UF government as 'pious wishes and full of contradictions.'

Congress sources said Mukherjee's critical approach paper is to help all party MPs to prepare themselves for nailing down Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda and his ministerial colleagues during the crucial budgetary discussions in Parliament.

Questioning the government's ability to achieve the Ninth Five Year Plan targets, the approach paper asks where the necessary resources for investment - 28.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product -- would come from

It said the Congress does not believe in the UF government's claims that Rs 375 trillion would be made available as budgetary support in the current financial year.

Accusing the UF government of projecting bloated figures to please industrialists and the common man, the critique says in the past ten years 'the erosion of savings in the government sector' has been going up. 'In the Seventh Plan the erosion of savings was 1.6 per cent and it increased to 1.9 per cent in the Eight Plan period,' it says.

'The UF government has failed to implement the expenditure cut proposed by the finance minister, mainly because of the strong opposition from the constituents units of the UF and the tendency of the government to indulge in a spending spree,' the approach paper alleged.

It said while the government has promised to drastically reduce budgetary support to public sector undertakings, it is contradictory that the Ninth Plan targets 3.8 per cent savings in PSUs.

Mukherjee's note said these are measures that would lead to 'an economic slippage' in the country. 'Any slippage in the current account deficit would create a situation worse than that in 1990-91 land balance of payment crises would upset all calculations,' it stated.

The paper said the government's plan for resource mobilisation will depend on its firm commitment to reduce subsidies, fiscal deficits.

Non-developmental expenditure and to enhance tax-GDP ratios. But these measures will remain 'pious wishes' unless there is conformity among the coalition partners, especially the Left parties.

Blaming that the government's attempt to introduce a different version of the Minimum Alternate Tax last year was a total failure. Mukherjee urged Finance Minister P Chidambaram 'to learn lessons from his past experiments.'