Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi on Wednesday stated that the BJP's current management of the country needs to be altered due to their policies causing significant harm to small businesses. While speaking at a rally in support of Congress candidate Vikramaditya Singh from the Mandi seat, Priyanka mentioned that initiatives such as demonetization and GST have had a substantial negative effect on small businesses in the country.
"During the entire tenure of Modiji, the work of creating employment has almost come to a standstill. Our country is facing the highest unemployment in the last 45 years. 70 crore youth are unemployed. To remove this, the way BJP is running the country must be changed because their policies have caused huge losses to small businessmen. Everyone knows that demonetization and GST have caused damage to the tourism industry," she said.
She asserted that if elected to power, they will work to strengthen the small business in the country as most of the employment is provided by this sector. "We want that if our government comes to power at the Centre, we will strengthen the small and middle-class businesses. Our understanding is such that most of the employment is provided by these industries," Priyanka said.
Targeting the BJP, the Congress leader said that their policy is to strengthen big billionaires by eliminating small businesses. "Today, all the wealth of the country is slowly being given to a selected few billionaires. The country's coal, mines, ports, airports, everything is being given to their friends. This causes a lot of loss to the country. Most of the cold storages in Himachal belong to Adani ji. What this means is that today Adani ji will decide what will be the price of your Apple. You have reduced the tax on apples coming from America and our farmers are paying GST for everything. Today all the agricultural equipment has become expensive," Priyanka Gandhi added.
Speaking on the Agniveer scheme, Priyanka said, "Many youths from Himachal join the army and protect us. But today Modi ji brings a scheme like Agniveer. If an Agniveer is killed in action, he will not get the status of a martyr. The martyr's parents will not even get a pension." Voting for all four seats in Himachal will be done in the last phase of the Lok Sabha elections on June 1.