Union Minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday hit back at the Congress over its questioning of India’s latest GDP figures, asking whether the opposition party was in a “state of deep intoxication” or had become so swayed by its “blind loathing of India's growth” that it had lost touch with ground reality.
Rijiju made the remarks on X while responding to a post by the Congress' Kerala Unit, which said, “Nobody believes the fake story anymore. The world can see through the fakery.”
The Congress handle had also shared an image of a beer mug, depicting the Indian economy as the liquid and the official GDP numbers as the fizz.
“Is the Congress in a state of deep intoxication due to drinking too much beer or Congressmen are so swayed by their blind loathing of India's growth that they have lost touch with the ground reality?” Rijiju said.
The war of words came after India’s economy grew by a faster-than-expected 7.8 per cent in the April-June quarter of the 2026-27 fiscal, indicating resilience despite concerns over an economic downturn following the war in West Asia and its disruption of energy markets.
The first-quarter growth, however, was lower than the 8.6 per cent recorded in the previous quarter. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the 7.8 per cent growth as a “herculean feat”.
The Congress, however, has questioned the credibility of the numbers and argued that they do not reflect the actual state of the economy.
Earlier on Wednesday, the party cited former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg’s remarks on the GDP data to attack the Centre, arguing that statistical revisions had significantly influenced the headline growth figure.
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh shared a video clip of Garg in which the former finance secretary said the revision of last year’s GDP by as much as Rs 6 trillion had pushed up the calculation of the current year’s GDP growth.
“Had you not revised last year's GDP, the growth in current prices would have been 2.6 per cent,” Garg said in the video.
Ramesh, in a Hindi post on X, said the Modi government could continue to “beat the drum” about what he called its fabricated GDP growth, which he alleged had been “conjured up through statistical jugglery by its team and media”.
He said the government’s claims would eventually be exposed because they were “the complete opposite of ground realities”.
The Congress has also rejected the 7.8 per cent growth figure as evidence of an economic revival, saying it is “not an economic spring”.
The party has described the latest numbers as a “Greatly Distorted Picture” of the Indian economy, arguing that the GDP figure does not capture what it calls depressed investment sentiment.
The BJP-led government, however, has projected the latest growth figures as evidence of the resilience of the Indian economy despite global disruptions and geopolitical uncertainty.
(With inputs from PTI)
