A leader of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), formerly known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday over the latter’s claims on the country's economic growth.
Modi, who is on a three-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat, said at a gathering on Monday that India, which is the fifth-largest economy globally, is moving ahead with stability and tenacity and the rapid growth happened after his party came to power.
Modi said under his government, India's position in the World Bank’s annual ranking of countries for ease of doing business jumped massively - from 142 to 63 in five years.
"There is an upheaval in the world economy. The Indian economy is the only one which is going ahead with stability and tenacity," Modi was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
“When I took over as PM in 2014, the Indian economy was ranked 10th in the world, now it has come to fifth position,” he added.
Y Sathish Reddy, the social media convener of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao's party, tweeted late Monday the above comment made by Modi and shared a screenshot of a news report wherein the World Bank had said that India became the world's third-largest economy in 2011.
{{/usCountry}}Y Sathish Reddy, the social media convener of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao's party, tweeted late Monday the above comment made by Modi and shared a screenshot of a news report wherein the World Bank had said that India became the world's third-largest economy in 2011.
{{/usCountry}}Labelling Modi's statement as a 'claim' and World Bank's statement as a 'Reality', Reddy, who is also the chairperson of the Telangana state renewable energy development corporation, wrote, “Name: Modi; Job: Telling lies.”
Soon after, several users on Twitter reacted to Reddy's tweet and said the comparison could not be made as Gross Domestic Product (nominal) and GDP (purchasing power parity) were two different things.
“This pinky man, will not mention that he is projecting fraudulent comparison by comparing Nominal GDP vs Purchase Power Parity," a Twitter user said, hitting out at the BRS' social media convener.
“2022 claim is by GDP (Nominal); 2011 news is by GDP (PPP),” another user tweeted.
Pallavi CT, co-convenor of the IT and social media cell at Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Mumbai unit shared the full link of the news report whose screenshot was shared by Y Sathish Reddy.
“My dear friend, i am sharing FULL article here so that you know who’s lying. The headline is MISLEADING India has now become 5th largest economy in world in GDP. At 7 %, India had the third-largest share of world’s expenditure for investment in 2011,” Pallavi CT tweeted on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has cut its projection of India's economic growth in 2022 to 6.8 per cent. Last week, the World Bank downgraded India's GDP or gross domestic product to 6.5% for the fiscal year 2022-23 from an earlier estimate of 7.5%. In the previous year, the Indian economy grew by 8.7%.
The World Bank, however, said that India is recovering stronger than the rest of the world and its economy did well compared to the other countries in South Asia.
(With inputs from agencies)