The Congress on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party to clearly spell out whether they support its proposal to give Rs 72,000 annually to five crore poor families under a minimum income guarantee scheme, claiming many BJP ministers were opposing the idea.

   

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the Nyunatam Aay Yojana (Nyay) is not a "top-up scheme" and is a women-centric scheme whereby the money will go directly into the bank accounts of the woman member of a family.

 

Speaking a day after Congress President Rahul Gandhi made the announcement about the poll promise after a meeting of the party's working committee, Surjewala alleged that it was "shameful" that the "pro-rich" Prime Minister Modi was opposing the world's biggest anti-poverty scheme.

 

Gandhi made the scheme public soon after it was given a go-ahead by the Congress Working Committee, that had met at the AICC headquarters to give final shape to the party's manifesto for the April-May parliamentary election, to be released soon.

 

The Congress leader also attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for dubbing the scheme as a "bluff announcement", saying no other political party has "betrayed" India for more than seven decades in the name of poverty.

 

Surjewala also attacked government think tank NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar dubbing the body he headed as "Rajneeti Ayog" and asked him to run the organisation from the BJP office and contest elections instead. -- PTI