Govt trying to divert attention from real issues like price rise: Congress

The Congress on Tuesday accused the BJP government of trying to divert the country's attention from real problems like price rise faced by common people to non-issues of caste and religion.

Party leader Rahul Gandhi raised the issue of the increase in GST on certain goods and claimed that the reality of 'achhe din', the BJP's poll slogan, is being continuously "exposed".

Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera alleged that prices of commodities of daily use are sky-rocketing due to which the masses are suffering.

"It appears as though there is Section 144 in the kitchen that you cannot keep more than four tomatoes or onions," he said, referring to the hike in prices.

"Why is it that we are paying Rs. 100 for a kilogram of tomatoes, Rs. 120 for capsicum, Rs. 50 for onions? Why is it that the farmers find it difficult to produce these commodities because of the input cost, which is very high? We have been repeating here, GST on agricultural equipments, the price of DAP, the price of diesel, after all, all these commodities come from various parts of the country to the Azadpur Mandi here," he said stressing on the extent of price rise and reasons for it.

"Why is it that the government keeps trying to distract the attention of the people from these issues to non-issues.

"At the end of the month, how much do we save in our pocket is how we measure the performance of a government and also performance of ourselves as media persons, of opposition leaders, have we been able to make the government realise its mistakes or not, as we struggle paying our EMIs, our monthly bills, whether it is milk, petrol, diesel, cooking oil, vegetables," he said.

"We would not allow the collective attention of the country to be hijacked by this government by creating non-issues by hiding their failures," the Congress leader told reporters.

Khera also alleged that the country was paying the price of the prime minister's mistakes.

"The 7.5 years of Mr Modi have been a long chain of mistakes, some acknowledged and some realised and some not. Why should the country pay a price for this series of these mistakes of Mr Modi," he asked.

The Congress leader said as a responsible opposition, they will not allow the attention of the country to be distracted and will keep bringing the narrative back on the everyday problems.

He said the government has realised some of its mistakes after the results of the recently-concluded by-elections and "'will realise them more in the next round of assembly elections".

With PTI inputs