NEW DELHI: With Rahul Gandhi looking to ride on the impact of his ‘Chhatron ki goonj’ initiative in his campaign against govt, a website, ‘jhooth ki goonj’, claiming to fact-check his assertions at the four editions of the event so far, has been grabbing attention in saffron circles.The digital counterpunch against Rahul’s campaign obviously complements BJP’s efforts, but the party has denied any association with the website. The website itself makes no direct mention of the people behind it, but as it trended on social media, some attributed its creation to “nationalist researchers” and Gen Z-ers, the very generation Rahul is targeting in his hops across cities.“Here are all the lies Rahul Gandhi told during his so-called Chhatron Ki Goonj,” the site reads, making no secret of where it stands in his pitch against BJP. It says Rahul has made 40 claims in his four interactions, and all of them were either false or misleading (29 false and 11 misleading).It adds that Rahul had said that out of 1,000 youths looking for jobs, about 36 will get permanent jobs. Roughly, 300 will remain unemployed and about 700 will become gig workers, he said. Rejecting the claim as false, the website cites PLFS unit-level data to claim that 26 out of every 100 graduates aged 15-29 in 2025 have salaried jobs.
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Taking on another claim that Rahul had made — about 29% women faced physical violence — the website says he relied on old NFHS data. “Since the Modi govt came to office, the NFHS data shows a clear decline in spousal physical and/or sexual violence: from 37.2% in (2005-06) to 22.3% in (2023-24),” it says.How much impact the website will make is anyone’s guess, but it has certainly got pro-BJP voices on social media excited. “From tweaked numbers to fabricated stats, every single claim has now been fact-checked,” one user said.
