New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge accused the BJP-led Centre on Friday of duping the country’s youngsters on employment generation by making false claims and coming up with false data on jobs.

He alleged that the government has only given paper leaks to youngsters and snatched their jobs with its bad policies.

“False claims, falsification of data and covering up the truth of declining jobs have become a habit of the Modi government. 82 per cent youth are looking for a job this year, 55 per cent said it became difficult to find a job last year. 37 per cent say they have given up hope of finding a new job in 2025,” Kharge claimed in a post on X.

He further claimed that according to a separate survey, 69 per cent of Indian human resources (HR) professionals feel that finding qualified talent for a role has become more challenging now.

“Without conducting a census, by estimating and extrapolating old surveys using government data, the Modi government is misleading crores of youth in the name of generating employment. By converting unpaid labour into jobs and counting even one-hour work per week as jobs, it is deceiving the country.

“The Modi government has duped the youth with lies like paper leaks by the Mafia Raj, stampede for a few jobs, snatching jobs by shutting down MSME through bad policies like demonetisation and wrong GST, usurping the right to reservation, keeping government job posts vacant for years and promising two crore jobs annually,” Kharge said.

The Congress has been targeting the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on employment generation and has questioned the Centre on its promise of providing two crore jobs every year to the country’s youngsters.