India's Congress promises jobs, end of sedition law to beat Modi

Published April 2, 2019
Rahul Gandhi, President of India's main opposition Congress party, and India's former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leave after releasing their party's election manifesto for the April/May general election in New Delhi, India, April 2, 2019. — Reuters
Rahul Gandhi, President of India's main opposition Congress party, and India's former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leave after releasing their party's election manifesto for the April/May general election in New Delhi, India, April 2, 2019. — Reuters

India's main opposition Congress party pledged on Tuesday to expand a rural employment guarantee programme, reward businesses for creating jobs and scrap an 1870 sedition law if it wins a general election that starts next week.

In a manifesto released by party president Rahul Gandhi, Congress highlighted job creation, tackling farm distress and empowerment of women as some of its top priorities. The BJP has in recent days focused mainly on national security amid fresh hostilities with neighbour and arch rival Pakistan.

Also read: Does Rahul want to win?

“It is an action plan for the future of India,” Gandhi said, speaking of the manifesto. “Now, it needs your support and your vote.”

He said Congress would expand an existing jobs programme to guarantee 150 days of work a year to rural households, up from 100 days.

Gandhi also said Congress had won voters' hearts with a plan announced last week to hand 72,000 Indian rupees (INR) a year to India's poorest, a promise the BJP has dismissed as a bluff and some economists have called fiscally irresponsible.

Congress promised to simplify the unified goods and services tax, quickly fill 2.2 million government jobs nationwide and create one million more on rural and urban development panels.

On Twitter, it called the manifesto India's “new tryst with destiny”, using a famous phrase from a speech made by Rahul's great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, on the eve of independence from Britain 67 years ago.

“This is an ambitious manifesto,” said Shilan Shah, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore. “The income scheme promise, though a worthy initiative, looks implausible to implement, considering India's limited fiscal space. India does not have the financial infrastructure in place to give such handouts.”

Congress, which had accused the government of trying to suppress dissent after the sedition law was recently used against students marking the execution of a Kashmiri militant, said it would scrap a law it said has been “misused and, in any event, become redundant”.

It also vowed to amend a law on special powers for the armed forces battling an insurgency in disputed Kashmir to balance security needs and protection of human rights, which the BJP criticised as a move to strip troops of immunity in a war zone.

Congress, founded in 1885, has consistently trailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in opinion polls, despite winning three state elections late last year amid farm distress and a jobs shortage.

Opinion

Editorial

Maintaining balance
Updated 16 Feb, 2025

Maintaining balance

It must take a more proactive approach to establishing Pakistan’s bona fides.
Welcome return
16 Feb, 2025

Welcome return

IT is almost here; the moment Pakistan has long been waiting for — the first International Cricket Council...
Childhood trauma
16 Feb, 2025

Childhood trauma

BEING a child in this society should not be so hard. But recurrent reports of child abuse — from burying girl...
The Peca problem
Updated 15 Feb, 2025

The Peca problem

The fight for fundamental freedoms is not the media’s alone, but one that concerns every citizen.
Miners in danger
15 Feb, 2025

Miners in danger

YESTERDAY’S devastating terrorist attack in Harnai, which killed at least 11 coal miners and injured seven others,...
Solar panels scam
15 Feb, 2025

Solar panels scam

THE scam involving over-invoicing to the tune of more than Rs69bn in the import of solar panels raises many ...