‘State of deep intoxication’: Kiren Rijiju attacks Congress over GDP growth claims

Attacking the Congress for questioning India’s GDP numbers, Union minister Kiren Rijiju on Wednesday asked if the opposition party was in a “state of deep intoxication” or had become “so swayed by their blind loathing of India's growth that they lost touch with ground reality”.

Rijiju made the remarks in a post on X in reply to a post by Kerala Congress, which said, “Nobody believes the fake story anymore. The world can see through the fakery.”

The Kerala Congress also posted an image of a beer mug showing the Indian economy as the actual liquid and the official GDP numbers as 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.

India's GDP grows 7.8 per cent

India's economy grew at a faster-than-expected 7.8 per cent in the April-June quarter, showing resilience against concerns of an economic downturn over the war in West Asia.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the first quarter of the 2026-27 fiscal slowed from a barnstorming 8.6 per cent in the previous quarter, but remained well above expectations when the conflict erupted and disrupted energy markets.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has termed the GDP growth a “herculean feat”.

Congress questions GDP figures

Earlier in the day, the Congress cited former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg's remarks on GDP numbers to attack the Modi government, saying it must understand that “PR can polish the picture” of GDP but not the economy itself.

Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, shared a video clip of Garg in which he said that by revising last year's GDP by as much as Rs 6 trillion, the current year's GDP in the first quarter has gone up by around 10.3 per cent.

“Had you not revised last year's GDP, the growth in current prices would have been 2.6 per cent,” Garg told a news channel.

Ramesh alleges gap between GDP and ground reality

In his post in Hindi on X, Ramesh said that no matter how much the Modi government “beats the drum of its fabricated GDP growth, conjured up through statistical jugglery by its team and media, its true reality will be exposed because what they are claiming is the complete opposite of ground realities”.

The Congress has alleged that the 7.8 per cent GDP growth is “not an economic spring” and claimed it presents a “Greatly Distorted Picture” of the state of India's economy as it doesn't convey the “depressed” investment sentiment.