A day after former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha criticised the Centre’s economic decisions, his son Jayant Sinha, minister in the National Democratic Alliance government, on Thursday dismissed articles “drawing sweeping conclusions” on the matter.

In a column in The Times of India, the minister of state for civil aviation defended the Centre’s economic policy, and said that the government was undertaking structural reforms to create a “New India”. “Goods and Services Tax, demonetisation and digital payments are game-changing efforts to formalise India’s economy,” wrote Jayant Sinha.

Jayant Sinha added that “one or two quarters of GDP growth” were inadequate to assess the long-term impact of the reforms.

Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha had attacked the government for the decline in the Gross Domestic Product growth rate to 5.7% in the April-June quarter. He had described the Centre’s demonetisation exercise as “an unmitigated economic disaster”. Sinha had said that despite low global oil prices, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had failed to use the extra finances at his disposal to revive the economy.

Congress should not be blamed, says Yashwant Sinha

BJP leader Yashwant Sinha on Thursday said that the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government should not be blamed for a slowdown in growth.

“We cannot blame the previous government for the decline in economy as we had a lot of opportunity [to make changes],” he told ANI. He added that the economy has been on the decline for a while now and this did not happen over just one financial quarter.

Reacting to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s statements defending the government, Yashwant Sinha said, “Maybe Rajnath Singh and Piyush Goyal know more about the economy than me, so they think India is the backbone of the world’s economy. I politely disagree”.