New Delhi. The Congress on Sunday alleged that the Narendra Modi government has limited the future of lakhs of youth to a mere “revenue raising exercise”. The party claimed that the National Testing Agency (NTA) has made a profit of Rs 448 crore in the last six years. Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh shared the reply of Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar to a question related to NTA in the Rajya Sabha on July 31 on the social media platform ‘X’.
He said in his post, “NTA is at the center of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) scam. It is a body of the Ministry of Education whose sole purpose is to function by hiring private ‘vendors’ through ‘outsourcing’. He said, “Not only is the credibility of these ‘vendors’ often in doubt, but the NTA itself is headed by a person who was the chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission when major scams came to light there.”
The Congress general secretary said that in a reply in the Rajya Sabha, the Union Minister of State for Education has revealed that the NTA collected an estimated Rs 3,512.98 crore while it spent Rs 3,064.77 crore on conducting the exams “hence a net profit of Rs 448 crore in the last six years”. “But these funds were not used to develop the agency’s own exam conducting capacity or to strengthen regulatory and monitoring capabilities for its ‘vendors’,” he said. “The future of millions of youth of India has ultimately become a mere revenue-raising exercise for the government of the non-biological Prime Minister,” he said.
Modi government cannot continue being negligent in implementing schemes: Congress
The Congress on Sunday targeted the central government over the implementation of the ‘PM-Kusum’ initiative launched in 2019 to promote the use of solar energy in the agricultural sector across the country, saying that the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot continue such “negligence” in the implementation of schemes. Congress General Secretary and party’s communication department in-charge Jairam Ramesh said that the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has revealed some “shocking facts” about the ‘PM-Kusum’ scheme launched with great fanfare in 2019 to promote the use of solar energy in the agricultural sector across the country.
Ramesh wrote on the social media platform ‘X’, “This is the latest information of 2024, two years before the target is to be achieved in 2026: Promise – 10,000 MW decentralized solar power plants will be installed on agricultural land. Reality – Only 256 MW plants have been installed (which is 2.56 percent of the target).” He wrote, “Promise: 14 lakh solar pumps will be installed. Reality: 3.97 lakh solar pumps have been installed (which is about 28 percent of the target).”
Ramesh said, “Promise: 35 lakh additional pumps will be made solar powered. Reality: 13,562 pumps were made solar powered (0.38 per cent of the target).” He said the only area where the scheme has performed well is the installation of solar pumps.
He said further analysis shows that most of the pumps have been installed in only three states – Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra – and it is worth noting that all these states had a ‘single-engine’ government, run by the Congress and its alliance partners for most of this period (2019-2024).
He said that climate sensitivity and adequate economic incentives for clean energy make it clear that energy production from renewable sources instead of conventional sources is a major economic priority for India. He said, “The ‘non-biological’ Prime Minister and his government cannot continue such negligence in the implementation of schemes.”