On sharp rise in prices of essential commodities and unemployment, the Welfare Party of India has launched a nationwide campaign to hold the government accountable and put pressure on the government to address the issues at the earliest. During the protest from 15th to 31st October 2022, the party will try to make people aware of the core issues and caution them on the false promises and divisive agenda.
Dr. S.Q.R. Ilyas, National President of Welfare Party of India, while addressing media persons at the Press Club of India on 13 October, said, “Despite the country’s enormous progress and notable accomplishments over its first 75 years of Independence, 200 million Indians still live below the poverty line. The Global Hunger Index ranks India 101st out of 116 countries, indicating the country’s exceedingly alarming degree of hunger.”
He added, “The per capita income of the nation’s 23 crore residents is less than `375. The nation’s unemployment rate is 7.3 per cent. Young people in the country feel tricked, disappointed, resentful, and angry due to the frightening unemployment situation in both rural and urban areas, where the unemployment rate is 7.5% in urban and 7.2% in rural areas, leaves young people cheated, frustrated and angry.
“These numbers merely serve to highlight PM Modi’s misleading claims that “India would have a trillion-dollar economy by 2022 and 2 crore jobs will be created annually. By 2022, farmer income will have doubled. Poor economic decisions made by the government, such as privatisation and crony capitalism, as well as the rupee’s decline to `82 versus the US dollar and the income decline of 64 per cent of households while the wealth of few individuals increased nine times, are only making the situation worse.”
The WPI leader also informed the audience that his cadre will visit people to find out who has got gas cylinder and if they have, are they able to refill it due to price rise? The figures will be sent to the ministry.
Welfare Party also demanded from the government and concerned ministry to withdraw GST on essential commodities, give money to the poor citizens to unable their purchasing capacity, give free gas cylinder and subsidised refill cylinders to all BPL card households under citizen centric Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, to continue the Prime Minister Kalyan Anna Rozgar Yojana to the BPI card households to prevent starvation and malnutrition.
It also demanded to extend MGNREGA to the urban poor through legislation and increase of wages to `500 and days to 200 for rural poor, for optimum implementation of Food Security Act and Essential Commodities Amendment Act; to roll back surcharge on Petroleum and get it under the ambit of GST; to make suitable corrective measures to check black marketing and corruption; to give unemployment stipend or berozgar bhatta to the unemployed youth in our country irrespective of their religion or caste; and to make Right to Livelihood a fundamental right under Article 21.