New Delhi (Sputnik): With the high stakes 2019 general elections a little more than a fortnight away, the president of India's opposition Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, took the battle right to the doorstep of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by unveiling a minimum income support scheme that he said would benefit nearly 250 million poor people across the country.
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Addressing a press conference in the Indian capital after presiding over a meeting of the Congress Party's Working Committee, Rahul Gandhi said that if he was voted to power, the scheme called "NYAY" (Justice) would deliver Rs. 72,000 ($1000) every year to the country's poorest 20 per cent.
"It is an extremely powerful, extremely dynamic, extremely well-thought idea. We have done all the calculations. We have spoken to economists. This is a ground-breaking idea," the Congress Party president said, adding that "All calculations have been done. There is no such scheme anywhere else in the world."
He said that 50 million families and 250 million people would directly benefit from this scheme.
"We will do justice by the poor people of the country through the Minimum Income Guarantee scheme. There has been no such scheme in the whole world," Gandhi claimed.
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In the election, Rahul Gandhi's Congress Party is pitted against India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
