Ease of doing business claim is sham: Congress

Even as the BJP tried to do a hard sell of improvement in the ranking of ease of doing business to portray a rosy picture of the economy, Congress sought to puncture the ruling party's claims. Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday launched an attack pointing at failures of the Jan Dhan Scheme. Asserting that the NDA government gave a fancy name of Jan Dhan Yojna to the Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account started during UPA-II, he termed it as an exercise in mass deception as banks were spending from their pockets to maintain accounts.

Chidambaram said by December 2016, 24 per cent of the accounts had zero balance and no data was available after that. Of the remaining accounts, 15-20 per cent has a 'balance' only because bank managers were encouraged to deposit Re 1 in the account.

He accused that Jan Dhan accounts were used to launder money after demonetisation. "A humongous sum of Rs 42,187 crore was deposited in Jan Dhan accounts between November 8 and December 30, 2016," he alleged and charged that banks have, without the consent of the account holder, converted Jan Dhan accounts into regular savings accounts.

Earlier, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and the party's spokesperson for economic matters Gopal Krishna Agarwal said India's ranking has improved 30 positions in the ease of business of policies and programmes of the Modi government.

Agarwal said that in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set a target of getting under 50th ranking in ease of doing business within five years.

BJP Replies

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra claimed that India’s ranking has improved 30 positions in the Ease of Doing Business because of policies and programmes of the PM Modi government.