New Delhi. Congress on Thursday attacked the central government over the prices of food items and quipped that “Modi hai to inflation hai”. Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has no solution to the inflation crisis.
Retail inflation fell to a one-year low of 4.75 percent in May due to a slight decrease in the prices of food products and remained within the satisfactory range of the Reserve Bank of India. According to official data released on Wednesday, the trend of decline in retail inflation based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) since January continued in May as well. According to data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), the inflation rate of food items in May was 8.69 percent, which is slightly less than 8.70 percent in April.
Ramesh posted on social media platform ‘X’, “Modi hai toh inflation hai. Food price inflation has been more than 8.5 percent for four months. Inflation rate of pulses has been in double digits continuously for the last one year, which is more than 10 percent. In May, prices have increased by 17.14 percent.” He said, “In the Congress’s manifesto, we had promised to take two measures to solve the problem of inflation and especially pulses. We had talked about legal guarantee of MSP for pulses with the price determined by the Swaminathan Commission formula as this would promote domestic cultivation of pulses.
According to Ramesh, there was talk of including pulses in the Public Distribution System (PDS) because doing so would increase the amount of protein in the diet of the poor and they would also be saved from inflation. He alleged that the “one-third Prime Minister” has no solution to this crisis.
PM is going to attend G7 summit to save his falling international image: Congress
The Congress on Thursday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to attend the G7 summit with the aim of “saving his falling international image”. Referring to the 2007 G7 summit, party general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had emerged as the voice of the ‘Global South’ (developing countries).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Italy today to attend the annual G7 summit as part of his first foreign visit after assuming office for the third consecutive term. The G7 summit is to be held from June 13 to 15 at Borgo Egnazia, a luxury resort in the Apulia region of Italy. The issue of the war in Ukraine and the Gaza conflict is likely to dominate the meeting.
“The G7 summit of the heads of state of the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Japan has been taking place since the 1970s. Russia was also a member between 1997 and 2014. Since 2003, India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have also been invited to the G7 summit,” Ramesh posted on X. “The most important G7 summit from India’s point of view was held in June 2007 at Heiligendamm, Germany. It was here that the famous ‘Singh-Merkel formula’ for ensuring parity in global climate change talks was first presented to the world. It is still talked about,” he said.