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Government wants to avoid Parliament: CPI

Marcus Dam

KOLKATA: The government “is trying to scuttle the budget session” by advancing the adjournment of the House as “Parliament is becoming too inconvenient in the background of the Centre’s total failure” to curb the price rise, Gurudas Dasgupta, MP of the Communist Party of India, said here on Wednesday.

“This is an unintelligent effort to gag various dissenting views as the government does not want to be further exposed on its inability and helplessness to control inflation. Parliament is becoming a casualty,” he told The Hindu.

The move to cut short the budget session to May 5 is being made “under the pretext that leaders will be occupied in the Assembly elections in Karnataka.”

On the state of the economy, he said “stagflation” was staring it in the face.

“There are unmistakable signs of stagnation and decline in production in the manufacturing sectors, cement and consumer durables. In an economy, when inflation is coupled with stagnation, it leads to stagflation — a result of faulty policies which the government is trying to cover up,” Mr. Dasgupta said.

Flays Chidambaram

He came down on Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram for reportedly suggesting that 60 MPs were against economic growth. This remark, it was inferred, was directed at Left MPs.

“We want economic growth; there is no fool in the country who does not. But along with economic growth, there must be equitable distribution without which what results are economic disparity and concentration of wealth,” Mr. Dasgupta said.

“The government is conspicuously silent on the question of equitable distribution and stagflation and as a cover wants to avoid facing Parliament,” he added.

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