Modi, Jaya slam ‘step-motherly’ Centre

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi tear into UPA-II’s policies, accusing the Centre of weakening the country’s federal structure and step-motherly treatment meted out to non-Congress-ruled states.

NEW DELHI: Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and his Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa joined hands on Saturday to tear into UPA-II's policies, accusing the Centre of weakening the country's federal structure and step-motherly treatment meted out to non-Congress-ruled states.

 Modi asked the UPA coalition to follow the "federal dharma" as he expressed anguish at the Centre's attempt to tinker with the structure.

The theme was also reflected in Jayalalitha's speech circulated at the NDC meet. She alleged that the UPA was "hell-bent on penalizing non-Congress governments". She also ridiculed the NDC meeting as a "ritualistic exercise", having failed to attend the Saturday's meet.

Jayalalithaa said the Centre was not treating states as partners, and has reduced them to "glorified municipal corporations" through attempts to weaken them. She alleged that many initiatives of the UPA in recent months are all fascist and anti-democratic.

Echoing her sentiment about the irrelevance of the NDC, Modi said that the body had been dwarfed by Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). "NDC is big or NAC. Who is the real authority?", he asked.

He accused the Centre of favouring certain states and lavishing them with lakhs and crores out of its discretionary fund and questioned the norms adopted for such arbitrary distribution, and demanded that the list of beneficiary states be made public.

Modi also highlighted the "widespread disenchantment" among the people who were becoming "increasingly impatient" with growing corruption. "It was painful to read the comments of the CAG that the credibility of the government is at its lowest since independence". There was a "credibility crisis" in the country and the confidence of people in governance had been shaken to the core, he said.

The Gujarat CM attacked the PM on inflation, accusing him of being "insensitive" to the plight of common people. Modi criticized him for "not uttering a single word to tackle inflation in his future plans on the 12th Plan. It is unfortunate that there is no word about inflation".

Jayalalithaa, too, alleged that the Centre "seems to have lost direction" and has left the state governments to face the public ire over issues like price rise. She said the government has "miserably failed" to arrest price rise and its policies and actions to tackle it were all counter-productive.