Manmohan Singh should not advice on economy: Nirmala Sitharaman

Sitharaman said, "He can give advice on anything but not on economy."

The Finance Minister seems to have referred to the recession in 2007-2008 fiscal year when Singh was the Prime Minister.

Sitharaman's response came a day after Singh, a Congress veteran, said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government should stop blaming the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government as the saffron party is in power for more than five years now.

Speaking about the falling of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 5 per cent, Singh said the government must first "diagnose the disease" before "curing it".

Earlier in a sharp statement, Sitharaman had said the worst phase of Indian economy was under Manmohan Singh and former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) chairman Raghuram Rajan.

Campaigning in Maharashtra for the assembly polls, Singh on Thursday urged the Centre to utilise the Prime Minister's Relief Fund to rescue the depositors of crisis-hit PMC Bank.

Singh said Mahrashtra has slipped into severe slowdown, forcing people to move out of the state in search of jobs.

While campaigning for the assembly polls, Singh said in a press conference here that slowdown has forced factories to close down and youth are moving to low paying jobs.

“There is gloom in Pune auto hub,” he said added that government apathy and inaction is affecting people.

“PMC bank depositors should be heard soonest,” he said. Mahrashtra ranked first in investment but registered highest number of farm suicides, reminded the former Prime Minister.

Adding further, he said that government must open its coffers to labour intensive industries and it time to get back to time tested methods to revive the economy.