PM "intellectually dishonest": BJP

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha on Thursday accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of being "intellectually dishonest", after the latter assured that his government will take all steps required to address the widening current account deficit.

"We will take all measures, fiscal, monetary and supply side measures to address the problem of the current account deficit", Dr. Manmohan Singh had said this morning.

The BJP took no time to lash out at the UPA ,with Yashwant Sinha saying "It is the usual trick of intellectually dishonest people to compare or dress up figures. The Prime Minister is not talking of the five percent growth rate which we have recorded last year, but he is (instead) talking about an average of the last eight years."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had earlier defended the UPA, saying it had "acted on all fronts", despite functioning amidst difficult times economically.

"The average growth rate in the 8 years of the UPA from 2004-05 to 2012-13 was 8.2 percent per annum. This is much better than the 5.7 percent reached in the previous 8 years," Singh said while listing the achievements of the UPA government.

Yashwant Sinha added that the UPA-led government were simply misleading the people with their false promises.

"It has been a very promising government and a very promising Prime Minister because they have been always making promises, which have not been fulfilled", said Sinha here today.