'PM fooling people before 2024 Lok Sabha poll': Trinamool attacks Modi

KOLKATA: TMC on Tuesday mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's instruction to recruit 10 lakh people on a "mission mode" in the next one and half years in various government departments and ministries and called it an attempt to "fool the masses" before the 2024 Lok Sabha poll.

Senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee said, "None of the promises made by BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ever been fulfilled. Modi had promised two crore jobs every year ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but in reality crores of people have lost their jobs in the last eight years. The Centre should give us data about the number of jobs created and job losses".

He said, "This is just an attempt to fool the masses ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls."

"Every time an election approaches, the BJP comes up with a new trick. What was its government (at the Centre) doing for the last eight years? Why was there no recruitment in government departments?" Chatterjee said.

Modi asked various government departments and ministries to recruit 10 lakh people on a "mission mode" in the next year and a half, the PMO said on Tuesday.

The direction from Modi came following a review of the status of human resources in all government departments and ministries, it said.

Echoing Chatterjee, his colleague in the party and ministry Tapas Ray said wrong decisions such as demonetisation have broken the country's economic backbone and led to a rise in unemployment across the nation.

"There has been a rise in unemployment across the nation due to faulty economic policies of the BJP government," he said.

Reacting to TMC's comments, West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said before pointing fingers at others the government should make public the data on employment rate in the state.

"We all know the reality of industrial growth in the state. The TMC government should first make public the data regarding how many jobs it had created in the last 11 years (since the party came to powers)," the BJP leader said.