A year on, Centre yet to define employment scheme: Rahul

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused the government of not defining the Employment Linked Incentive scheme, which was announced a year ago by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked if it was just another jumla. Meanwhile, the BJP retorted that the Congress leader was weaponising ignorance.

Addressing Modi, Gandhi said on X that while he created new slogans every day, the youth were still waiting for real opportunities. He said, “What is your concrete plan to generate the crores of jobs India desperately needs, or is this just another jumla?"

Hitting back, BJP’s Amit Malviya said either Gandhi’s team has completely failed to brief him on the facts or, far more likely, he is “weaponising his trademark ignorance to gaslight India’s youth".

The ruling party’s IT department head said, “This isn’t a gaffe; it’s a calculated strategy to distort reality, using his platform to spread misinformation under the guise of cluelessness."

The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said that after the 2024 election, PM Modi announced the “Employment Linked Incentive" scheme with much fanfare, promising to provide employment to our youth. “It’s been nearly a year since announcing the scheme, the government hasn’t even defined it, and has returned the Rs 10,000 crore allotted to it. This shows how serious the PM is about unemployment," he alleged without elaborating the claim.

Malviya claimed that only 2.9 crore jobs were created during 2004-14 under the Congress-led UPA government, while the corresponding figure for the Modi government during 2014-24 was 17.19 crore. He added, “In just the last year alone (2023-?24), 4.6 crore jobs were created – more than the entire decade of Congress rule."

India