New Delhi:The Congress on Tuesday questioned the government’s claims of “Amrit Kaal” saying the number of Indians giving up citizenship had increased by 1.7 times over the past eight years and on an average 600 persons left the country per day in 2022. The government is celebrating the 75th year of India’s Independence and has declared it as Amrit Kaal.
“The number of persons giving up their Indian citizenship increased by 1.7 times over the past years. The Jan to Oct 2022 period saw the highest number of such cases. Around 7000 persons who left in 2022 were high net worth individuals whose annual incomes was Rs 8 crore,” Congress spokesperson Prof Gourav Vallabh said.
“This is happening due to high unemployment rates and low growth opportunities in the country. This is because of demonetisation and a flawed GST. We would like to ask the government why so many Indians are leaving the country…Is it Amrit Kaal...when will achche din come…why are our people forced to leave the country for achche din,” he said.
Prof Vallabh cited data obtained from the ministry of external affairs which showed the average number of persons who gave up Indian citizenship in 2014 was 354, going up to 448 in 2021 and 604 in 2022. As per the ministry, the actual number of persons who gave up Indian citizenship in 2014 was 129328, in 2021 it went up to 163370 and in 2022 it went up to 183741 till Oct 31.
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“This showed an increase of 1.7 times since 2014. If our global ranking is consistently falling, this is bound to happen,” said Prof Vallabh, wondering why the government rejects any such data published by independent global agencies. The Congress leader blamed the consistently high unemployment and low GDP growth opportunities as the reasons behind Indians giving up their citizenship.
He cited the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy data to allege that the unemployment rate was consistently very high during 2022. “It was more than 7 percent for 9 months out of 12 and for 4 months it was over 8 percent. For December it was 8.3 percent overall and 10 percent for urban India,” said Prof Vallabh.
He further said that due to the twin shocks of demonetisation and a flawed GST, Indian GDP growth fell from 8.3 percent in 2017 to 3.7 percent in 2020 and due to the 2020 lockdown the GDP further fell down to minus 6.7 percent in 2021. “For 2022, the GDP growth was 8.7 percent but there is nothing to celebrate here due to low base growth in 2021,” said Prof Vallabh.
He lamented the fact that India ranked 107th out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index in 2022, which was down from 101st rank in 2021. “Other than Afghanistan, all other Asian countries are doing better than us in the global hunger index,” said Prof Vallabh.
Further, he said that the Global Gender Gap Index for 2022 released by the World Economic Forum ranked India at 135 out of 146 countries while the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders ranked India at 150 among 180 nations in its 2022 report. “The report further mentioned that India was one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media,” said Prof Vallabh.
The Congress leader further noted that India had the largest number of poor in the world at 228.9 million in 2020 as per a United Nations Development Program report and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford. “We added the maximum number 79 percent to the global extreme poverty during the 2020 pandemic. When will our PM do a 'mann ki baat' on this issue,” said Prof Vallabh.
