Himachal Assembly Polls 2017: We lost two tallest leaders for nation, don’t need BJP’s certificate, says Anand Sharma

The BJP has attacked the Himachal government on corruption. What is the Congress’ strategy?

There have been no charges of corruption against the government. There are no FIRs, no inquiries. There are some old cases of disproportionate assets against CM Virbhadra Singh, which are sub-judice. There are allegations against the BJP, too. They have fielded the highest number of corrupt politicians in the state — 23 with criminal charges and 9 with serious criminal charges.

 
The Prime Minister said in his speech at Kangra on Thursday that the Congress’s support for Kashmir’s “azaadi” is an insult to the Army...

The Congress definitely does not need a certificate from PM Modi on our love for the country. The party has paid the supreme sacrifice and we have lost two of our tallest leaders in service of our nation. Modi has no counter for the betrayal of people for not delivering on his promises, especially jobs. He promised 7 crore jobs. His government killed
over 4 crore. The twin blows of demonetisation and GST have taken away over 33% jobs from the MSME sector. He needs to address that instead.

The BJP says that it was the Congress which thought of the GST...

It is true that the original author of GST was the Congress. Then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee drafted it and sent it to a standing committee. It was finalised by P Chidambaram. For seven years, we could not pass the GST because of a strong opposition from the BJP. Especially from Modi who said that GST was against the “spirit of the Constitution”. But when he came to power, he saw virtue in it. The government met Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, and later, formally asked for our support. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley met me, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Chidambaram. We agreed to extend support on three conditions. The first was that the highest tax slab should not exceed 28%, the second was to support small enterprises which do not have infrastructural back-up, and the third was to not exclude revenue goods like petroleum products, fuel, electricity etc. The BJP took our support and did exactly the opposite: there are now five tax slabs and the GST is one of the highest in the world, there is no help for the MSME sector and they excluded petroleum products, fuel electricity etc, which make for 45% of the revenue, from GST.

The BJP has attacked your manifesto, saying that these are false promises...

Unlike the BJP, we do not make false promises. Himachal Pradesh has a population of 75 lakh, and in the last five years, we created 65,000 jobs. In Gujarat, where the population is 6.5 crore, the BJP has managed to create
10,000 jobs. We built four medical colleges, while they have had to shut down their government schools. The BJP is now talking about appointing a new Lokayukta, when the big question is why have they not appointed the Lokpal even after the Bill was passed and the Supreme Court has passed orders. Their vision document has no vision. It is all lies.