PM Modi Attacks Rahul Gandhi in Gujarat, Saying “Truth Will Defeat Jhooth Ki Goonj”

Today in Vadodara, Gujarat, Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and then “Aari Aari” from the popular movie Dhurandhar played on a stage as Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic entry to thunderous applause from a young audience. While the 1977 song, which is associated with youth movements, was playing in the background, PM Modi waved to a sea of young people as he went across his home state to announce new projects and inaugurate completed ones.

The prime minister, making reference to opposition groups like the Congress, urged young people not to believe lofty assertions made by individuals who propagate false information. “People will try to mislead you through Jhooth Ki Goonj, but youth will stand with truth,” he said in an apparent swipe at Rahul Gandhi and his party’s Chhatron Ki Goonj campaign.

The prime minister’s remarks also parodied a satirical political website’s fact-check of Rahul Gandhi’s speeches, which claimed that he made incorrect claims in most of them. According to the website “Jhooth Ki Goonj,” it examined 40 comments made by Rahul Gandhi at four different events related to his “Chhatron Ki Goonj” campaign and concluded that 29 of them were “false” and 11 were “misleading“. Numerous announcements on infrastructure projects and some jabs at the opposition were made during the “NaMo for Viksit Bharat” event.

“Recently, a double-stack container freight train was operated from JNPT (Mumbai) to Vadodara – meaning the train ran with one container stacked on top of another. With this single trip, the volume of cargo transported from Mumbai to Vadodara was equivalent to that of over 250 trucks,” PM Modi said.

“Now, enter the naraaz fufa (angry uncle) figure, the one who will immediately start complaining, ‘what about the truck drivers, where will the trucks go, what will happen to those who bought trucks?’ Well, fufa has found something to grumble about now,” PM Modi said. He cited the Dedicated Freight Corridor’s pre-2014 state, claiming that throughout the seven or eight years of the previous administration, not even one kilometre of the project had been finished.

In an effort to lessen the financial burden on low-income and middle-class families, PM Modi stated that the government is moving toward offering free online coaching by top teachers to kids studying for competitive exams. This is an issue that is very important to the younger generation, or Gen-Z.

The world is changing rapidly, and along with it, the needs of the world are changing too. Similarly, our methods and ways of learning and education are evolving as well. Earlier, the entire focus used to be solely on degrees, but now, alongside degrees, the focus is also on skills. The importance of skills is growing… Every year, a significant portion of the earnings of our middle-class families is spent on coaching for these children,” PM Modi said.