8 cheetahs have come, why didn't 160 mn jobs come in 8 yrs: Rahul Gandhi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying eight cheetahs have come and now he should tell why 16 crore jobs weren't created in eight years.

Prime Minister Modi turned 72 on Saturday. It was a busy day for the PM who, among other things, released eight cheetahs brought from Namibia at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh under a landmark project seven decades after the animal was declared extinct in the country.

In a tweet in Hindi, Gandhi said, "Eight cheetahs have come, now tell why 16 crore jobs didn't come in eight years."

"Yuvaon ki hai lalkar, le kar rahenge rozgaar (It is the cry of the youth that they will have employment)," the former Congress chief said, using the hashtag 'Rashtriya Berozgar Diwas'.

The Congress on Saturday claimed that in view of the "worrying" job situation in the country, the youth are marking the prime minister's birthday as "National Unemployment Day", and demanded that he provide employment to them as promised.

Modi promised to provide two crore jobs annually but instead only seven lakh people have been given employment in the last eight years, it claimed, adding that 22 crore people had applied for jobs.