BJP Slams Congress, Raghuram Rajan as India Clocks 7.2% Growth in GDP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticized economist and former Reserve Bank of India chief Raghuram Rajan following the release of the National Statistical Office (NSO) report, which stated that India’s growth rate for the entire FY23 stood at 7.2%. During the Bharat Jodo Yatra in December 2022, Rajan had reportedly told Rahul Gandhi that “India would be lucky to achieve 5% GDP growth next year (FY 2022-23)”.

In a Tweet on Thursday, BJP spokesperson Amit Malviya said: “Congress apologists are like ‘filth seeking flies’. Give them a clean room and they will look for that tiny spec of dirt and scream blue murder. Put them in stinking filth (reminiscent of UPA era), and they wallow, in pleasure. They are inherently sadists, who want to see a billion people starve so that they can wax eloquent about povertarianism, while sipping on their exquisite wine.”

The National Statistical Office (NSO) has published the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) for the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2022-23, as well as the overall growth rate for the entire FY23.

According to the official data, the country’s GDP witnessed a growth of 6.1 percent in the fourth quarter of FY22-23. For the entire fiscal year 2022-23, the growth rate stood at 7.2 percent.

In related news, the government data released on Wednesday reveals that the fiscal deficit for 2022-23 stood at 6.4 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), aligning with the finance ministry’s projections in the revised budget estimates.

The Controller General of Accounts (CGA) presented the revenue-expenditure data of the Union government for 2022-23, stating that the provisional fiscal deficit in absolute terms amounted to Rs 17,33,131 crore.

To finance the fiscal deficit, the government resorts to market borrowing. The CGA also noted that the revenue deficit accounted for 3.9 percent of the GDP, while the effective revenue deficit was 2.8 percent of the GDP.