New Delhi [India], October 9 : Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday accused the Narendra Modi government of promoting monopolies and duopolies across sectors of the economy, alleging that its economic policies favoured select capitalist groups and benefited the BJP.
In a post on X, Kharge alleged that the objective of the government's economic policy was to hand over control of the economy to its favoured capitalists in return for maintaining the BJP's share in the profits.
"The objective of Modi ji's economic policy is to hand over control of the economy to his favoured capitalist cronies. So that, in return, the BJP maintains its share in the profits. By ending Competition and imposing Monopoly and Duopoly, they have only worked to fill the BJP's coffers and have ruined the foundation of economic liberalisation," he said.
Citing the telecom sector, Kharge claimed that there were 13 players before 2014, while only three major private players remain today.
He also referred to the domestic aviation sector, claiming that the number of major players had fallen from seven before 2014 to two.
"Whether it's Digital Payments, Cement, or Food Delivery Apps, the government's priority everywhere has been to eliminate competition," Kharge said.
Claiming that the Congress was responsible for economic liberalisation, he accused the BJP of pursuing what he termed "economic terrorism" for its own profits.
He further alleged that the government's policies had hurt micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and other small and medium industries, while contributing to severe unemployment among the country's youth.
"The BJP only implements economic terrorism (Economic Terrorism) for its own profits, as a result of which MSMEs and other small and medium industries have been completely locked down, and our youth are enduring the curse of severe unemployment," Kharge added.
Earlier today, on the US government's suspension of the Permanent Labour Certification Programme and its effect on major Indian IT companies, Congress MP Jebi Mather alleged that American interests were influencing India's policy decisions. She linked the issue to changes involving UPI payment charges and exemptions for certain sectors.
She claimed that the US had attempted to influence India's UPI payment system as domestic platforms such as UPI and RuPay gained strength. She also alleged that concessions had been extended to major Indian business groups in sectors such as telecommunications and power."This is the same situation of where the US tried to influence our UPI payment system because the US giants, which were considered to be at the top in the world as the payment giants, whether it is Mastercard or whether it is Visa, they were the payment giants, but when UPI was becoming strong in India, and RuPay was becoming, President Trump dictated terms from there and started saying that this should not be charged. That's how UPI was charged: it started for anything other than personal use or any industry, not industries; even officially, any business transactions were made chargeable, also keeping that this must be the amount. Now, this exemption was given to whom? For the telecom sector, and who is in the telecom sector? Reliance. Who is the exemption given to power? Who is heading power? Adani is heading power. So, whether it is this UPI, what we are seeing is that from there they dictate terms, but here exemptions or concessions are given to Reliance," she added.