Ahmedabad:

Railway Minister and senior BJP leader Piyush Goyal today defended PM Narendra Modi and his government on the issues of employment generation, GST, inflation and development and said that the definition of employment was changing across the globe and continuous wins of his party in elections including the massive ones in UP and Uttarakhand shows that irrespective of critisims by opponents the blessing and support of people was with the BJP.

He also said that GST was not implemented by BJP alone but it was a consensus decision of the center as well as 29 states including six congress ruled and two with left party governments. The GST council was continuously working for modifications in it as in its last meeting alone rates on as many as 63 items were lowered. It was not correct to say that the businessmen and traders a traditional voters of BJP were aggrieved with the party on the issue. In fact many of them have not yet understood it fully.
Addressing a press conference here Goyal said it was also not correct to say that the government has failed on the front of employment generation. ‘The definition of employment across the globe was changing. Three of the world figures in the field of economics Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Harvard University Economist Michael E Porter have also endorsed this view. Now the typical definition of job as government job alone has changed. Now the new generation want to be more of a job giver than job seeker. It was going for things like start ups and own businesses. In India under the MUDRA shceme around nine crore people have been disbursed about Rs 3.5 lakh crore of loan which has also created jobs.

Reacting to former finance minister Yashwant Sinha’s write up claiming the decline in economy during Modi government, Goyal repeatedly said that it was his own opinion and everyone was free to have one. ‘We have peoples support and blessings. We won 325 seats in UP and 58 in Uttarakhand. We also won election after election at other places including Goa and Manipur. It shows that people was supporting the government and BJP and its policies,’ he said.

To a query he said that it was wrong to say that making development the main poll plank in Gujarat might boomerang. ‘On the contrary it was proving to be fruitful to us as our good work in the past was paying us. BJP which has won continuously in Gujarat for over two decades will win once again,’ he said.

He also said that inflation has been controlled by the government. ‘When PM Modi took the rein in 2014 after the UPA 1 and 2 rule it was in double digit and now it was somewhere around 3.25%. Such control of inflation was visible earlier only during NDA 1 regime under Atal Bihari Vajpayee,’ he said.

Earlier he also said that during the over two decade of BJP rule Gujarat has seen a phenomenal development. Giving detailed statistics to support the claim he said that the gross state domestic product of the state has increased 15 fold, per capita income over 10 fold, Industrial output 15 fold and budget size around 16 fold. The state has also fared much better than national average in the filed of agriculture, Industrial development, employment generation and forest cover etc.

DeshGujarat