Modi mum on jobs, says Rahul

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi attacked PM Modi on Thursday for not a single word on unemployment in his 100-minute reply in the Lok Sabha on the President's address and instead kept distracting the nation by raising irrelevant issues of Congress sometime, Jawaharlal Nehru some time and issues like Pakistan and Bangladesh.

He told reporters that the Congress members kept urging him to devote at least two minutes on employment but he ignored it as did Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had not a word on employment in her nearly threehour budget speech on Saturday.

Rahul said the biggest issue before the nation is employment and economy as every youth wants a job after passing college, university or school but the PM skipped the issue.

In reply to a question, he said the PM's style is to distract the nation as he promised jobs to two crore every year but nothing happened in five and a half year. "We asked him to admit that one crore youths lost the jobs in the last year and the PM had no answer," Rahul added.

It's not true Modi averted any mention of the issue of employment. He rather laid stress now on the job creation, saying he has learnt from farmers who make the fields ready and sow the seeds at the right time. The PM claimed he took time to prepare ground for employment and "now I will sow seeds one by one to trigger creation of massive employment."

The PM also referred to increase in the massive increase in the number of members under the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), saying would not be possible without a spurt in the number of those getting new jobs.