Shooting off a seventh question at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, even as campaigning for elections in Gujarat reached fever pitch, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi committed an embarrassing mathematical faux pax with regard prices of essential commodities on Tuesday.
Directly blaming the prime minister for the price rise of essential items like cooking gas, vegetables, and fuel, Gandhi aggressively highlighted the difference in rates as they existed in 2014 when general elections were last held, and rates as they exist or prevail now in 2017.
Presenting the data on gas cylinders, Gandhi said that cost of one cylinder in 2014 was Rs 414, whereas in 2017, it had gone up to Rs.742. Thereafter, instead of saying that there had been an increase of 79%, the Nehru-Gandhi scion erroneously mentioned it as a 179 % increase.
That was not all! He followed it up by saying that price of pulses had risen by 177% instead of 77%, the price of tomatoes had gone up by 285% instead of 185 %, that of onions had gone up by 200 % instead of 100% that of milk had gone up by 131% instead of 31% and the price of diesel had gone up by 113% instead of 13%.
However, Rahul Gandhi later posted a corrected tweet.
Keeping the Gujarat polls in mind, which presently experts and pundits are saying is running neck-to-neck, Gandhi has been shooting off a series of questions at the Prime Minister and demanding that he give accountable answers to each one of them.
The former has also asked the latter to come clean and stop his charade of the BJP and Centre claiming that development has only taken place in Gujarat and in other parts of the country under its direction.
