Pranab Mukherjee's reply shows we have to live with inflation: BJP

BJP today said finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's reply in Parliament on price rise only showed that people will have to learn to live with inflation.

"Worries increased and disappointment also increased... what I found was there is rationalisation... we must learn to live with this inflationary pressure," Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said.

Jaitley, who moved the resolution urging government to take further effective steps to contain inflation, said the states too have the responsibility but the Centre is key manager of the national economy.

Responding to Mukherjee's appeal for "cooperative federalism," Jaitley said such cooperation should not mean that the states should take the blame for inflation.

On the proposed Goods and Services Tax, he said states are worried that the measure would take away one more power of theirs. As it is, the Centre was not clearing the state legislations for years and mineral-rich states are being deprived of their due share in natural resources, he said.

In the Lok Sabha, senior BJP leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha said growth with inflation was not acceptable to the people.

"If higher growth rate means high inflation, we don't want such a growth. We reject such a growth," he said while initiating a discussion on the supplementary demands for grants.