Congress failed to keep up job promise in 2003, says Anurag Thakur

Union minister and BJP leader Anurag Thakur on Wednesday lashed out at the Congress claiming it made tall promises while in power about giving jobs but failed to live up to them.

Speaking to ANI in Shimla on Wednesday, the Union Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs said the Congress came to power in the state in 2003 on the promise that it will give jobs to the unemployed youth of the country.

"The Congress had said in 2003 that it will give jobs to unemployed youth. But did anyone get jobs? It was because of their failed promise to generate jobs that they were thrown out of power," the BJP leader, who is an MP from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency in Himachal Pradesh, said.

He added that after failing to meet its 2003 job pledge ahead of the 2003 Assembly polls, Congress had promised an umeployment allowance for the jobless ahead of the 2012 state elections but failed to deliver on it as well.

"They said in 2012 that they will give unemployment allowance but nobody got it. They were voted out again," the Union sports minister said.

Invoking the Congress's 'Garabi Hatao' (eradicate poverty) promise, the BJP leader said, "Indira Gandhi raised the slogan of 'Garabi Hatao' and even Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi echoed the chanted it. Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, too, invoked this slogan. But when I travelled to Amethi (an LS seat which used to be a Congress bastion) during the BJP's 'Tiranga Yatra', I saw a long queue of shanties."

Listing out the development work carried out under the BJP government, Thakur said, "What changed after 2014? Today, 3.22 cr people have been provided with pucca houses, every village has electricity connection, every house has tap water access, every kitchen has an LPG cylinder, houses have toilets and people have bank accounts and access to 'Ayushman Bharat' (Centre's flagship healthcare scheme).