The Indian National Congress (INC), India's largest opposition party, faces a challenging upcoming general election in the country, as it seeks to improve on the ruling party's governance through introducing various economic and defense policies, Maj. Dalbir Singh, a department head with the INC's All India Congress Committee, told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th April, 2019) The Indian National Congress (INC), India's largest opposition party, faces a challenging upcoming general election in the country, as it seeks to improve on the ruling party's governance through introducing various economic and defense policies, Maj. Dalbir Singh, a department head with the INC's All India Congress Committee, told Sputnik.
"Our campaign is going on in full swing in almost all the states. It is only a matter of a few more weeks. We hope we will do well. Politically our biggest challenges are obvious, we have to stitch up alliances. I am currently in the process of doing so at various levels. We have to tell the people the truth, and we cannot make hollow promises and not be able to face them down the line," Singh said.
The politician accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of having failed to fulfill its 2014 election promises.
"The current government came [to power] on the basis of promises that it made in 2014. It has virtually fallen short of many of those promises. It has not been able to deliver on the acceleration of the economy or the promise of creating jobs for the youth, improvement of governance, effective handling of terrorism and bringing about massive economic growth in the country," Singh said.
Singh stressed that one of the main areas of focus for the party was to introduce policies that would boost India's economic growth.
"We plan to speed up economic growth. We plan to speed up manufacturing, which has fallen to nearly 9 to 10 percent. We want to take it to 25 percent in another five years-time because manufacturing is very, very core to economic growth and development. It's only with good manufacturing and improvement of the service industry [that] we will increase the GDP growth," Singh said.
Apart from policies targeting manufacturing, the INC wants to raise employment levels in the country through various schemes, the official added.
"In terms of rural employment, we have a Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme. It used to cover poor people for 130 days of assured employment. We intend to increase it to 150 days a year," Singh said.
He added that the INC intended to fill 400,000 vacancies in Indian governmental institutions, including the parliament, by the end of the year as part of its effort to counter unemployment.
"With the employment level, what we are going to do is fill up 400,000 vacancies by 2019, which are already existent in the judiciary, in the central government and even in the parliament. There is a number of these jobs available. And [we will fill] another 200,000 jobs by 2020 in local bodies as well as in states. These are practical figures," Singh said.
The politician noted that the BJP government's policies had been detrimental to the country's economy.
"Today what we see is that unemployment is at an all time high. It is possibly the highest in the last 45 years that we have seen. Agriculture growth is the lowest in the last 10 years, leading to huge farmer distress � leading to farmer suicide and massive burden of loans on the farmers," Singh said.
Singh criticized BJP's lowering of India's defense spending.
"As far as the defense budget is concerned, it is the lowest it has been in the last 50 years. We have also seen certain institutional sovereignty eroded, and we can only see some failed promises and empty slogans," the politician said.
Singh pledged that the INC would boost defense spending to tackle the terrorism threat, if it came to power.
"We have security challenges across the border, and we need to increase spending to meet the requirements of our Armed Forces. We plan to do that," the official said.
Apart from increasing spending, according to Singh, the INC will also push for India's permanent membership of the UN Security Council.
"We plan to set up a national council on foreign policy and redouble our efforts for permanent membership of India in the UN Security Council as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group," Singh said.
The 2019 Indian general election is scheduled to be held in seven phases between Thursday and May 19. Several thousand candidates will compete for 543 parliamentary seats in the Lok Sabha, the Indian parliament's lower house. The vote count will be held on May 23.
