Union Minister of petroleum and natural gas, Hardeep Singh Puri, slammed Congress for indulging in the ‘shoot and scoot’ brand of politics which is notorious for making baseless allegations just to malign the repute of one’s opponent. He also cornered the grand old party on a host of issues, including paper leaks, the Congress leaders misquoting data to spread falsehoods on employment, corruption, and inflation.
In a post on social media platform X, the minister said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government stood for credibility of promises, while the Congress stood for crisis of credibility.
Senior most leaders of the Congress do not check facts before going public with their delusional opinions, the Union Minister said, hinting at various instances wherein party leaders made contradictory comments.
“Under leadership of PM @narendramodiJi, India has witnessed significant employment growth over the years. Employment has increased by nearly 36%, adding around 170 million jobs between 2016-17 and 2022-23,” he wrote on the X.
Congress Party’s classic shoot & scoot brand of social media policy based on lies, fabricated figures & fake data is back in action.
Even their senior most leaders do not check facts before going public with their delusional opinions.
Under leadership of PM @narendramodi Ji,… pic.twitter.com/0BaQdzJm5C
— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) November 2, 2024
“Let me also remind them that India’s economic trajectory demonstrates sustained job creation across key sectors. We are on our way to becoming the world’s 3rd largest economy very soon from the 11th spot their famed economists and policies left us in 2014,” the minister added.
He said that while providing direct and indirect employment opportunities to India’s youth, the country’s GDP grew at an average rate of over 6.5 percent during the same period.
The minister highlighted improvement in employment, and said the Indian labor market indicators show that the unemployment rate has declined to 3.2 percent in 2022-23.
Agriculture remains dominant, employing over 45 percent of the workforce, with is a gradual shift toward manufacturing and services.
Without naming Rahul Gandhi, Minister Puri also took a swipe at the Congress party saying, “I would once again request Mr Kharge to stop looking at the family scion as a benchmark of unemployment & his own party’s coffers as an indicator of declining savings of average Indians. ”
“According to PLFS, youth (age 15-29 years) unemployment rate has declined from 17.8 percent in 2017-18 to 10 percent in 2022-23. EPFO has reached 131.5 lakh in 2024 while Gig Economy workforce is expected to grow to 2.35 crore by 2029-30,” the minister wrote.
Slamming Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Puri said that while Kharge sees ‘stampedes’, he is unaware that the Worker Population Ratio has increased by almost 26 percent between 2017-2023.
Lambasting Congress party on the issue of corruption, the Union Minister added, “Mr Kharge’s party is so obsessed with ‘Khana-Kamana’ that it facilitated during its rule through a slew of scams that it is not able to look beyond.” He added that the Congress party suffers from “selective amnesia.”
“He is clearly looking at all the wrong places and getting fake data, or maybe is just too preoccupied with trying to hold his imploding party together and buys whatever lies his advisors sell to him; or he is just too fixated with the ‘unemployment’ of his party’s travelling Shehzada,” he said.
The latest tussle between BJP and Congress broke out a day after Kharge stirred a hornet’s nest by publicly reminding his party leaders that they should make poll promises after considering budgetary resources. Incidentally, his ‘admission’ of making fiscally imprudent or fake guarantees prompted PM Modi to take a swipe at the grand old party saying that it has been exposed before the voters.