Lack of leadership behind UPA scams: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman

New Delhi: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman Saturday said lack of leadership lay at the heart of the "scam-driven" United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government as well as mismanagement of the economy during its tenure. Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi ran the government as "super Prime Minister" without being accountable, she said.

"Sonia Gandhi-ji was the super Prime Minister as the chairperson of the National Advisory Council and an extra-constitutional and unaccountable person," Sitharaman said in her reply to a short-duration discussion on the white paper on the Indian economy in the Rajya Sabha.

The white paper was presented in Parliament on February 8.


"It was an unaccountable and unanswerable power. Due to this, scams took place. It was an unconstitutional use of power," said the FM.

'Guided by Desire for Political Gain'
Sitharaman said the UPA regime's reckless fiscal policy, ill-targeted subsidies and wasteful expenditure were guided by the desire for political gain.

She said the inflation rate had been below 4% in the last year of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government (2003-4), but it remained significantly high during the 10-year UPA regime that followed.

The finance minister said the Congress party had mastered the art of ruining the accomplishments of the previous government, as they did while managing inflation.

On Friday, speaking in the Lok Sabha, she had said that the economic mismanagement of the UPA government had pushed the country into the so-called Fragile Five group of countries.

Sitharaman cited the northeast as an example of the Congress party's neglect of key regions.

There had been complete neglect of the region by the previous government and the second railway station in the northeast only came up after the Narendra Modi government took charge in 2014. This was despite former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh being a Rajya Sabha member from Assam.

"In all our independent India's history, a second railway station (came up) in the northeast when PM Modi came in," Sitharaman said. "You forgot the northeast. At least you remember that Dr Manmohan Singh himself was from Assam, you should have worked there a little."

Presenting a contrast in the way the current government works, she said Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally monitors the progress of development projects, even with district-level officers. This is how the Modi government was able to put the economy back on track and now India is set to become the third-largest economy.

She said the Congress fears people who could overshadow the "first family", citing leaders such as BR Ambedkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Karpoori Thakur.

She added that the Gandhi family gave the Bharat Ratna to themselves but did not bother about others.