Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram on Thursday slammed the Narendra Modi government's economic performance. Chidambaram was addressing the media in New Delhi a day after he was released from prison on bail in the INX Media money laundering case. The former finance minister questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence amid slowdown.

"Prime Minister has been unusually silent on the economy. He has left it to his ministers to indulge in bluff and bluster. The net result, as the Economist put it, is that the government has turned out to be an ‘incompetent manager’ of the economy," news agency ANI quoted Chidambaram as saying.

The former finance minister also questioned BJP government's economic vision and blamed its series of controversial decisions for the decline in growth.

"The government is wrong. It is unable to look for the obvious clues because it is stubborn and mulish in defending its catastrophic mistakes like demonetisation, flawed GST, tax terrorism, regulatory overkill, protectionism, and centralized control of decision-making in the PMO," News18 quoted Chidambaram as saying.

"Please remember Dr Arvind Subramanian’s caution that 5% under this government, because of suspect methodology, is not really 5% but less by about 1.5%," news agency ANI added.

Chidambaram also raised doubt whether the GDP growth will come at 5 percent on a day the the RBI slashed the GDP growth projection for the financial year 2019-20 to 5 percent from the earlier forecast of 6.1 percent.

"Nothing sums up the state of the economy better than the following series of numbers: 8, 7, 6.6, 5.8, 5 and 4.5 Those are the quarterly growth rates of GDP in the last six quarters. The third and fourth quarters of 2019-20 are not likely to be any better. We will be lucky to end the year if growth touches 5 per cent," the website added quoting the former finance minister.

The former finance minister also said his "record as minister and conscience are absolutely clear".

"Officers who have worked with me, business persons who have interacted with me and journalists who have observed me know that very well," News18 added.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to Congress leader P Chidambaram in a money laundering case related to INX Media and directed that he could not leave the country without its prior permission nor speak to the media.

Chidambaram, who has been in custody for 105 days, should neither try to influence witnesses nor tamper with evidence, the court said while setting aside the Delhi High Court November 15 verdict denying the former Union finance minister bail

A three-judge bench, headed by Justice R Banumathi, granted the relief to the 74-year-old Congress leader on a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh with two sureties of the like amount.

-with inputs from agencies

First Published:Dec 5, 2019 12:49 PM IST