Not A U-Turn Government, But We’re Flexible When People Raise Concerns: Nirmala Sitharaman’s Reply To Congress

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday came down heavily on naysayers for labelling the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government as “U-turn government", adding the Congress has in turn become a “naara or sloganeering party".

The Congress has been accusing the government of being weak as it has reversed many of its decisions, including those on lateral entry or the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS), which the government says is an improvisation over the New Pensions Scheme (NPS).

Sitharaman said, “U-turn by definition means reverting to the old system or the policy which is not the case. We are flexible and keep in mind the concerns of the middle class and the people."

Like in the case of indexation, the government said there were concerns raised by some in the middle class who felt that their hard-earned savings through property could be compromised.

The government and the finance ministry has made it clear that the UPS is financially more prudent than the old pension scheme (OPS), which many Congress-ruled states such as Rajasthan under Ashok Gehlot and Himachal Pradesh have not been able to adopt successfully. “We saw some aspects of the NPS and as we are a flexible government, we changed it to replace the NPS with UPS. If we were a rollback government, we would have gone back to OPS, which we have not," she said.

The Congress has been pushing a social media campaign, saying the Modi government is on the decline, as it has had to reverse many of its earlier decisions under their pressure. The Congress has given Rahul Gandhi credit for this.

But the finance minister said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and Congress need to look in the mirror and at the past to know what an actual “rollback sarkar" is.