Shiv Sena attacks government over unemployment, growth rate

The new Cabinet during its meeting on Friday revealed the Central Statistic Office data which showed that the unemployment rate in the country has touched its 45-year high.

New Delhi: Criticising the Centre over unemployment and slow growth rate, Shiv Sena on Monday said that concrete steps should be taken by the newly-formed government to create job opportunities. In an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamana, Shiv Sena, which is BJP’s oldest ally, said that unemployment, inflation and falling industrial output are the major challenges for Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre.

It may be recalled that the new Cabinet during its meeting on Friday revealed the Central Statistic Office data which showed that the unemployment rate in the country has touched its 45-year high. The Shiv Sena mouthpiece said that the CSO numbers show that the government has failed to create two crore jobs every year as promised.

The Saamana editorial said that while Shiv Sena agrees with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s claim that BJP should not be blamed for the problem of unemployment in the country but we must not forget the fact that the previous government had promised to create two crore jobs every year.

“Nitin Gadkari says that unemployment is not a creation of the BJP. While we agree with him, the previous government had promised that two crore jobs would be created every year. Going by that, a target of 10 crore jobs should have been crossed by now. That has not happened and the Nehru-Gandhi family cannot be blamed for this. The truth is, income generation has been on a decline and jobs in Central government have witnessed 30-40 per cent decrease,” the editorial said.

The Saamana editorial said that the recruitment in government jobs has fallen by 30-40% and only one lakh people were given Central government jobs in 2016-17 and it came down to 70,000 in 2017-18. According to Sena mouthpiece, this includes the recruitments done by UPSC and SSC. The Saamana editorial said that the number of job opportunities created by Railway and Banks has also decreased.

The Sena mouthpiece also quoted the government data to buttress its claim, saying 37 lakh jobs were required in 2015-16 but only 1,48,000 people were able to land jobs. In 2017-18, 23 lakh jobs were required and only 9,21,000 people got jobs. Shiv Sena said that economy is in real problem and it is the job of new Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to find out ways to create job opportunities.