NEW DELHI: Hitting out at Finance Minister P Chidambaram for attacking Narendra Modi, BJP today accused him of indulging in “statistical jugglery” about the growth figures and making unfair comparisons of the UPA’s nine years of rule with the NDA government’s achievements.
“Can Chidambaram explain why the growth rate today is 4.8 per cent? When growth rate in this period goes down they have all kinds of explanation on why it has gone down. And then they quote figures from our time to say that they have a better average,” BJP leader Yashwant Sinha told reporters here.
Chidambaram has charged the Gujarat Chief Minister with staging a “fake encounter with facts” regarding his claims of economic growth during BJP-led NDA being 8.4 per cent and said nothing can be further from truth.
Sinha alleged that this statistical jugglery is being done by Chidambaram as the UPA government cannot compete on year-to-year basis with the NDA regime and hence is taking out averages.
“They are comparing nine years average with five years average of NDA,” Sinha said, adding that when NDA came to power the growth rate was 4.8 per cent and when the BJP-led coalition relinquished office it was 8.6 per cent.
“Chidambaram is doing terrorism with facts…. He is only comparing on averages. This is only jugglery of figures,” he said.
The former Finance Minister also maintained that while NDA had created 60 million jobs in five years, the UPA government has only provided 2.7 million jobs in nine years.
Sinha said, “Congress has reasons to be scared of Modi, so they don’t miss any chance of attacking him. The more they will target him the more it will help Modi.” -PTI