Just hours before a ‘face-off’ between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday released what it called ‘Jumla Metre’ with some #FactCheck of the “lofty claims” made by the PM.
“The last time Narendra Modi came to #Bengal, he made some lofty claims. We did a #FactCheck of that speech using our special #JumlaMeter on our party’s website,” tweeted the ruling party in West Bengal.
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“Since 2014, PM Modi has been on a lying spree. Here are the multiple times our Prime Minister was caught in the act,” the party said while presenting portions of the PM’s speech against the “facts”.
Raising flags in the PM’s speeches at various events, including the Westminster Hall in London, the TMC countered each of them on a separate page on the party’s official website.
The TMC said that contrary to the PM’s claim that neglected tea gardens in north Bengal were reopened by his government, the Centre was “supposed to take over seven closed tea gardens in 2016 but didn’t”.
“Bengal government has brought all people living in tea gardens under Khadya Sathi. Full exemption from payment of Education Cess and Rural Employment Cess,” the TMC said in its ‘fact checker’.
The party said that the Bengal government decreased unemployment by 40 per cent when two crore jobs were lost in India, which goes against the PM’s statement that the youth of Bengal are not getting jobs.
Underlining the irrigation projects in the state, the party countered the PM’s allegation that irrigation is in a bad condition in North Bengal.
“Eleven river embankment protection works completed in Jalpaiguri District alone, 13 in Coochbehar, 7 in Darjeeling. Improvement of drainage capacity of Gadadhar Channel, Jalpaiguri,” the party claimed in their riposte.
Stressing that North Bengal Development Department was constituted in 2011 and various projects under Uttar Banga Unnayan Parshad have been completed, the party said countered the charge that north Bengal had been neglected.
Commenting on crimes, the party pointed out that the last hanging in a rape case was in 2004. The PM had claimed in a speech that rape culprits are now hanged in 3, 7, 11 days and a month.
Pointing to a statement from 2015, the TMC said that coal auctions have got a mere Rs 5,684 crore instead of the Rs 2,00,000 crore as was claimed by the PM then.
In what can be seen as an acknowledgement of works done by other opposition parties, the TMC said that Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme was announced by the UPA-II government in 2013 and not by the Modi government.
“PM Modi at a rally in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh said that the UP government then run by the Samajwadi party, had supplied more electricity during Eid than Diwali,” the party said on their fact-checker site.
“As per official statistics, the power supply on Eid (6 July 2016) was 13,500 MW/day while the power supply on Diwali (28 Oct to Nov 1, 2016) was 15,400 MW/day with 24-hour supply on all 5 days,” the party added.
Stating that the PM claimed in his April 2018 address in the Westminster Hall in London that NDA government is building about 3 times more roads than what was being constructed earlier, the TMC said that data available with the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the daily highway construction was about 13 km between 2011-12 and 2013-14.
“In comparison, average daily highway construction during the first three years of the Modi government (2014-15 to 2016-17) was 17 km. The average daily highway construction has gone up by only 4 kms and not tripled,” the party said.
The party also gave data on houses constructed, crop insurance scheme and airports to counter the PM’s claim.
The Prime Minister will be addressing a rally in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri. Banerjee, too, will be speaking at a rally in nearby Dinhata, just minutes after the PM’s address.
