GUWAHATI: The Congress hit back at chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday for allegedly misleading the people of the state on Assam’s performance in the SDG (sustainable development goals) report of 2020-21.
The Opposition party said that while all states have made some amount of progress, Assam’s progress from 2019 to 2020 was of barely two points (55 to 57), making it the slowest overall progress among all states.
Deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi, said Assam ranked poorly in health, education, economy and women’s safety and hasn’t shown any significant growth since 2018.
He said there were clear cut contradictions with what the NITI Ayog report said and the CM’s recent claims asserting improvement on several parameters.
“The chief minister first claimed that Assam had progressed from being an Aspirant Category in 2018 to Performer Category in 2020.
However, the truth is all states have made some amount of progress.
The highest growth of a state was 12 points, far from Assam’s growth rate.
Assam’s overall rank in this recent survey also dropped from 23rd to 26th,” Gogoi told the media in a virtual address on Wednesday.
“Overall, Assam is in the bottom rankings of all the essential categories of economy, healthcare, education and gender equality and there hasn’t been any significant growth since 2018.
The BJP government should be honest about its shortcomings instead of misleading the people,” he said.
The Congress blamed the BJP for the percentage of population living below the national poverty line remaining the same throughout 2019-2020 with 31.98% showing no improvement.
In the field of health, which was under Himanta Biswa Sarma for long, Gogoi said Assam has the lowest score of 59 among all states and dropped by three ranks from the 25th to 28th place.
“The percentage of adolescents aged 10-19 years who are anaemic is 36.9, higher than India’s score.
States like Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal have much better scores.
Assam also has the highest maternal mortality rate among all states with a score of 215, almost double of India’s score,” the Kaliabor MP said.
In the education category, Gogoi said Assam has ranked 24 out of 28 states and its score has actually dropped this year from 44 to 43.
Though, if compared to the rank in 2019, Assam has improved by one rank from 25 in the previous year.
“Assam’s drop out rates in Classes 9 and 10 is the second highest among all states.
It also has one of the lowest pupil-teacher ratios of 11 among all states and almost half of India’s score of 21,” he added.