NEW DELHI: Amid a raging controversy over a government report painting a grim job scenario in the country, Congress Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, likening him to Hitler, inviting a sharp retort by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comparing him with Hitler’s contemporary, Italy’s Fascist leader Mussolini. 

The sharp exchange took place on twitter after a media report, citing the National Sample Survey Organisation data, said the country’s unemployment rate was at a 45-year-high at 6.1 per cent in 2017-18. 
Taking a jibe at Modi, Rahul tweeted, “NoMo Jobs! The Fuhrer promised us 2 Cr jobs a year. 5 years later, his leaked job creation report card reveals a National Disaster. Unemployment is at its highest in 45 yrs. 6.5 Cr youth are jobless in 2017-18 alone. Time for NoMo2Go. #HowsTheJobs”.
Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator of Germany, was called Fuhrer.

Rahul’s use of the hashtag #HowsTheJobs was a reference to the popular dialogue, “How’s The Josh”, from the Hindi film Uri: The Surgical Strike.

The BJP hit back, referring to the Italian roots of the Congress president’s mother and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. “It’s clear that he has inherited Mussolini’s shortsightedness and has myopic understanding of issues. EPFO’s real data shows sharp increase in jobs, created in just the last 15 months. Only a man who hasn’t ever held a proper job & is totally jobless can peddle such #FakeNews,” the party’s official handle tweeted. 

Rahul has been attacking Prime Minister Modi over lack of two crore jobs a year, as promised by him before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and has decided to make it a major poll plank. Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma also questioned the government’s claims over job creation, saying it should not use fudged data.

"NoMo Jobs! The Fuhrer promised us 2 Cr jobs a year. 5 years later, his leaked job creation report card reveals a National Disaster. Unemployment is at its highest in 45 yrs. 6.5 Cr youth are jobless in 2017-18 alone. Time for NoMo2Go. #HowsTheJobs"