Opposition Makes Unemployment Key Poll Issue, Khattar Says Situation Being Portrayed Not Correct

Opposition parties in Haryana including the Congress have said that the rate of unemployment in the state has reached 28.7 per cent which is the "highest in the country".

. (PTI)

Chandigarh: With the opposition parties targeting the BJP government in Haryana over unemployment, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday said the situation being portrayed by them was not correct. "As much as it is being said (about unemployment rate), it is not that much," Khattar told a news conference here while replying to questions on lack of jobs. Opposition parties in Haryana including the Congress have said that the rate of unemployment in the state has reached 28.7 per cent which is the "highest in the country". Khattar said about 80,000 graduates and post-graduates are unemployed, as per the figures available on Saksham, which is the state government's portal on which unemployed youth seeking job opportunities register themselves. "There is a percentage of unemployed people who are under matric, class 10th or class 12th pass," he said. When asked why the opposition has made unemployment a major issue for the October 21 assembly polls, Khattar replied: "There is no definition of what will be an election issue, there is no criteria for that." Khattar asserted that Haryana's economy was in a much better shape than many other states. "National GDP for 2018-19 was 6.8 per cent, in Haryana it was 8.2 per cent. If we take agriculture growth for this period, in country it was 2.9 whereas the state it was 5.5 per cent, industry growth rate was 6.9 per cent, but in Haryana it was 8.6 per cent, in service sector it was 7.5 per cent as against 8.2 per cent in Haryana," he said. Khattar said that in 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings, Haryana, which was at 14th spot in 2014, stands at third spot now. "We have created investor friendly environment and nearly Rs 85,000 crore investments have come into our state, which is highest for the five year period," he said. Gurgaon, the state's industrial hub, has offices of 200 of the 'Fortune 500' companies, he said. "Our economic parameters are much better than neighbouring states like Punjab, where employees sometimes don't get their salaries on time," he said. Khattar said that 437 job fairs have been held during five years wherein 82,600 youngsters were been hired by private companies including Ola and Uber. The Congress had taken a jibe at Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for her remarks that the slowdown in the automobile sector was due to many factors like the change in mindset of millennials, who now prefer taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber instead of paying monthly installments to own a car. Reacting to Sitharaman's comment, Khattar said, "She never said Ola and Uber were responsible for the slowdown in the auto sector." On the allegations of the opposition that Haryana's law and order situation has worsened under his watch, Khattar said, "As far as law and order situation goes, it has improved compared to what it was earlier (during previous Congress regime)." "Registration of FIR is must when a crime is reported. But records say 30 per cent complaints turn out to be false during investigation," he said. "In some states, their intent is to avoid registration of case so that the flood of cases is not seen (crime graph), but here in Haryana we register every complaint. Figures tell that the cases now are much lower than they were in 2012," he claimed. In his introductory statement, Khattar talked in detail about various steps taken the Centre to deal with slowdown in GDP growth, which he said was caused by global factors too. He said in a major fiscal booster, the Central government has slashed effective corporate tax to 25.17 per cent while several other steps too have been taken with regard to the slowdown. On the National Register of Citizens, Khattar said he favours its implementation in all state, asserting that the NRC was not an election issue for the BJP.