Congress distorted GHI report to tarnish India's image: BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday shrugged off Congress party's claim that India's 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI) rank has slipped down and accused the party of misleading people by presenting false facts.

The BJP's stance comes a day after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi tweeted a media article on GHI 2017, while quoting a couplet of Hindi poet Dushyant Kumar: "If you are hungry, be patient! So what if you have no bread? Hunger is a hot topic, these days. Of debate in the Delhi Durbar!"

Stressing that India's position had rather improved, BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimha Rao said the Opposition's allegation are false and intend to malign the image of India.

"The Opposition's allegation of the Global Hunger Index 2017 report that India has slipped below to 100 in 2017 to from 55 in 2014 is utterly false, baseless and beyond fact. This allegation is a false attempt to tarnish the image of India. The Bharatiya Janata Party rejects it altogether," Rao said in a statement.

He further slammed the Congress vice president for presenting distorted facts before the nation.

"In the country, Rahul Gandhi and Congress and Company, who are involved in anti-development and negative politics, are projecting the real facts in distorted manner," he said.

Rejecting opposition claims that India had dropped 45 points compared with its earlier rank, Rao said the first two and a half years taken into consideration in the GHI pertained to the period when the Congress-led government was in power.

"The evaluation of the 2017 Global Hunger Index score is 2012-2016. The point which is to be noted is that during the two and a half years of the beginning of this era, the Congress-Sonia Gandhi government was in power. Not only that, the Congress was in power since 2004, so India's score in the 2017 Global Hunger Index underscores the failures of the Congress-led UPA government," he said.

The BJP leader further lashed out at the Congress for doing politics of lies and said the people of the country are well aware of the politics and negativity of the Congress.