Kolkata, April 13: Union Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s claim of West Bengal moving towards a debt trap was made to appease his party’s ally Trinamool Congress and thereby gain mileage in the Assembly elections, the CPI-M said today.
“Pranab Mukherjee knows very well that mere borrowing does not make a state financially bankrupt,” CPI-M mouthpiece ‘Ganashakti’ said in its editorial page today.
It said that to give legitimacy to Trinamool’s “absurd” claim of financial bankruptcy, the Union finance minister forgot to mention that the central government’s total loan amount ran upto Rs 35.68 lakh crore.
“If the West Bengal government has become financially bankrupt, the Centre has already turned so,” the daily said claiming that Mukherjee made the statement on Monday here “knowing fully well as an economist that no economy can develop without loan or borrowing”.
Stating that the West Bengal government’s loan till 2010-11 stood at Rs 1
-Agencies