With 7-year-old tweet, Chidambaram takes a jibe at PM Modi

Former Union minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday dug out a 7-year-old tweet to target PM Narendra Modi over the current economic situation in the country, days after official data showed that India’s gross domestic product or GDP contracted 23.9% in the pandemic-hit April-June period.

“I have to say the same thing to the Honourable Prime Minister!”, the former Finance Minister tweeted while retweeting a November, 2013 post of then Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi that said, “Economy is in trouble, youth want jobs. Devote more time to economics not petty politics. Chidambaramji, please focus on the job at hand!”

Chidambaram has often targeted the government’s economic policies and the state of the economy. Soon after the GDP numbers came out, the Congress leader tweeted, “Of the world’s major and advanced economies, India’s economy declined more than any other country’s except the economy of the United States. What does that tell us? That Mr Modi stands second only to Mr Trump in terms of incompetent economic mismanagement.”

He said the GDP in the first quarter has declined by a whopping 23.9 per cent, which means about one quarter of the gross domestic output as on June 30, 2019 has been wiped out in the last 12 months or the gross domestic output has fallen by about 20 per cent since the end of 2019-20.

The Congress leader said, “only sectors that has grown is Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing at 3.4 per cent, and the Finance Minister, who blamed an ‘Act of God’ for the economic decline, should be grateful to the farmers and the gods who blessed the farmers.”