New Delhi: The Congress on Friday termed as a "lie" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks that the government's mudra scheme gave a boost to employment and alleged that he had conducted a "surgical strike" on jobs last year.
Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh, at a press conference, cited data by the Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy to claim that in 2018, 1 crore jobs were destroyed in various sectors due to demonetisation and hasty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.
"It is the first time in history that under a Prime Minister jobs have not been created but destroyed, and history will remember him as a 'jobs destroyer PM'," he said.
In an interview to a TV channel, Prime Minister Modi said, "Imagine, 4 crore people, it's a total of 15 to 17 crore - exact number will be here or there - who have taken money from banks via the mudra scheme. 4 crore people have taken money for the first time. They must have started some employment, they must have employed somebody."
Ramesh said, "The Prime Minister says that there has been a revolution in creating jobs through Mudra. I haven't heard a bigger lie than this."
"In 2017-18, close to 90% of the loans had an average size of Rs 24,840. This is completely inadequate for even one job, let alone 2-5 as claimed by the Prime Minister," he said.
Only two per cent of Mudra loans were greater than Rs 5 lakh under which employment conceivably could be generated from the returns of the loan, Ramesh said.
"You do different kinds of surgical strikes, at the border, in space, anytime, that is different. But the reality of unemployment that is there on the ground, you did not do a surgical strike on that.
"However, you did a surgical strike on employment in 2018. Demonetisation was a surgical strike, hasty implementation of GST was also a surgical strike. 1 crore people were affected by this surgical strike," the senior Congress leader said.
Ramesh also slammed the Prime Minister for saying that the opposition has no right to abuse.
"The PM is a master in abusing and is giving sermon to opposition parties," he said.
"If there is no data (on jobs), then do they have the right to abuse? If they don't have the data, do they have the right to abuse?" Modi said in his interview.
The biggest issue in the elections will be unemployment, Ramesh said.
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