Rahul Gandhi targets govt saying 2 crore jobs lost in last 4 months

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that around two crore people lost their jobs in the last four months amid the coronavirus pandemic and asserted that the "truth about unemployment" cannot be hidden from the country.

Citing a media report, he said in a tweet in Hindi, "In the last 4 months, around 2 crore people have lost their jobs. The future of 2 crore families is in the dark. The truth about unemployment and destruction of the economy cannot be hidden from the country by peddling fake news and hatred on Facebook." The news report cited by Gandhi claimed that around 1.89 crore jobs were lost due to the coronavirus pandemic from April onwards.

A massive political row broke out after a report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last week alleged that senior Facebook executives had opposed applying hate speech rules to posts by certain BJP leaders, with the BJP and the Congress engaged in a bitter war of words over the issue.

"We cannot allow any manipulation of our hard-earned democracy through bias, fake news and hate speech. As exposed by WSJ, Facebook's involvement in peddling fake and hate news needs to be questioned by all Indians," Gandhi tweeted on Tuesday.

Hitting back at the Congress, Union Information Technology Minister and senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said people whose political base has "shrunk like anything" seek to dominate discourse on these platforms, and asserted that everybody, regardless of his ideology, has the right to air views.

Gandhi also attacked the government over the expansion of the list of beneficiaries of National Food Security Act.

"The Modi government had to expand the list of beneficiaries of NFSA, but the government did not do so. The public did not get ration which was their right and the problem took the form of tragedy," Gandhi said in tweet in Hindi.