Lok Sabha polls 2014: Congress manifesto a rehash, destined to remain unrealised; CPI(M)

NEW DELHI: Terming the Congress manifesto a " rehash of earlier unfulfilled promises", CPI(M) today said the issues raised in it would remain unrealised and the people would again be burdened by more miseries if the ruling party returned to power.

"In sum, the Congress manifesto is a rehash of its earlier unfulfilled promises. Its fate is, hence, destined to remain unrealised," CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said, adding the BJP's outlook was "no different".

He recounted several issues -- ranging from inclusive growth and checking price rise to spending six and three per cent of the budget on education and healthcare respectively, saying these were old promises which have not been implemented in the decade-long rule of the Congress-led UPA.

In an editorial of the forthcoming issue of CPI(M) organ 'People's Democracy', Yechury quoted the manifesto as saying the Congress would continue to take steps to check inflation and said "backbreaking rise in prices of all essential commodities continues pushing millions of people additionally below the poverty line."

"When UPA-II took over, in the first speech to the joint session of Parliament by the then President, the country was promised that inflation would be controlled in the first 100 days. A hundred days have passed over 18 times since then."

Quoting the 2004 Common Minimum Programme of the UPA-I government, the CPI(M) leader pointed out that the promise of spending three per cent of GDP on public health was still there in the 2014 poll manifesto of the Congress and said the UPA-II spent "a ridiculously low amount of 0.03 per cent of GDP on public health".

On education, the Congress once again promised spending six per cent of GDP whereas its government's revised estimates say onlu 0.69 per cent was spent.