Rahul following religion of falsehood and misleading people on job issue, claims BJP

New Delhi, Jul 11 (PTI) The BJP on Thursday said India is marching ahead on the path of progress under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and cited government data to accuse Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of misleading people on the issue of employment and the government policies.

The ruling party's charge comes a day after Gandhi on Wednesday said the youth of the country have been completely demoralised by unemployment and claimed that their future is in "limbo" due to the BJP's "anti-education mindset".

Gandhi's remarks came over a media report, which claimed that the salaries of engineers graduating from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in 2024 have experienced a decline due to the slowdown in hiring.

Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters here, party national spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam said that about 12.5 crore jobs were created in the last 10 years of the Modi government and the latest RBI report, released recently, showed creation of "five crore jobs in 2023-24 alone".

“This is a record in itself in the entire world. India is most successful country in the world in job creation due to the strong leadership of Prime Minister Modi,” he said.

“Rahul Gandhi, who insulted Hindus, has started following the religion of falsehood. He and other opposition leaders are misleading people by spreading lies,” Islam charged.

The BJP leader said that Gandhi and other opposition party leaders may be claiming that there is unemployment in the country and jobs are not being created but the world doesn’t say so.

Multilateral and big institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund say inflation is under control in India and the country tops in job creation, he added.

On Sunday, the Congress alleged that the Modi government had accentuated India's "unemployment crisis" with the decimation of job-creating MSMEs through the "Tughlakian demonetisation, a hastily rushed GST, and rising imports from China".

In a statement, Congress general secretary, in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh had cited a new report by Citigroup, a global bank, to flag "alarming numbers", which he claimed confirmed what the Congress stated throughout the recent election campaign.

Hitting back, Islam said the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government under “an economist” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had created just 2.9 crore jobs during its 10-year term.

“Unemployment rate, which was at six per cent in 2017, has now come down to 3.2 per cent,” he added.

The data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) earlier this week indicated that India added nearly 4.7 crore jobs during 2023-24, taking the total number of employed people to 64.33 crore spread over 27 sectors covering the entire economy.

Using the Tornqvist Aggregation formula, the RBI said the annual growth in employment during 2023-24 was six per cent compared to 3.2 per cent in the year-ago period.

Reacting to the RBI report, Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said on Tuesday that India's data credibility is plunging to greater depths.

"RBI says jobs grew 6 per cent in 2024. India’s data credibility is plunging to greater depths. Modi propaganda and spin destroying the truth!" Yechury had said in a post on X.

He also shared the data released by non-government economic think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), which showed unemployment was at 9.2 per cent in June 2024. PTI