Better to sell pakodas than be unemployed: BJP President Amit Shah

BJP President Amit Shah speaks in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. Pic/PTI

BJP chief Amit Shah yesterday tore into the Congress over its "failure" to tackle unemployment and other problems and its criticism of the GST, saying it was not a 'Gabbar Singh Tax' but the revenues go to pay for 'one rank, one pension' and subsidises the poor. In his maiden address in the Rajya Sabha, he asked whether the Congress was inciting the people not to pay taxes, as he listed out the NDA government's achievements. Shah took on senior Congress leader P Chidambaram for his 'pakoda' jibe.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in a recent interview that a person selling pakodas was employed. "It is better for a youth to earn living selling pakodas instead of being unemployed. Making pakodas is not shameful, what is shameful is comparing such a person with a beggar," he said and added that a "chaiwala's (tea-seller) son has become the Prime Minister today." In his almost 90-minute speech, Shah termed GST as a big reform which "realised the dream of 'One Country, One Tax'" and castigated the politics over the new indirect tax regime.

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