Rahul slams Modi over shrinking workforce report; says he is 'joke'

In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over reports of shrinking workforce, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said his policies have "destroyed" one crore jobs last year and that "India's PM is a joke".

Gandhi's criticism of Modi came after an English daily quoted a government labour document to claim that the "actual size of India's male workforce, or men who are working, has shrunk for the first time since 1993-94".

"I thought India was producing 450 jobs a day. Turns out Modi's policies destroyed 1 crore jobs in 2018. That's 27,000 jobs lost every single day of 2018. India's PM is a joke," he tweeted.

However, the Congress chief did not elaborate how he reached at the 1 crore figure.

At a rally in Manipur, Rahul Gandhi said the Prime Minister had made a promise of providing two crore jobs every year but one crore jobs were lost in 2018 alone. "This is the scale of his incompetence. It is absurd and ridiculous that the PM promises giving two crore jobs," he alleged.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the youth, the poor and the middle-class in the country have to understand that Modi is "harmful" for employment.

On the NSSO labour report quoted by the media, he said, "it is clear now that if someone has taken away jobs of the youth in the country, it is Prime Minister Modi, who claims himnself to be a chowkidar."