Did Rahul Gandhi Promise Rs 8500 Per-Month To Youth Surfing Social Media?

Recently, a video clip of Rahul Gandhi went viral on social media, claiming that he promised Rs 8500 per month to the youth surfing social media. The video clip went viral on Facebook and Twitter.

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The same video clip can be seen here, here, and here.

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Fact Check

We started our investigation by conducting a keyword search on YouTube, which led us to the Economic Times channel. We found a more extended version of the viral video uploaded on 22nd April 2024 on the channel. In the video, Rahul Gandhi says, “The graduates and diploma holders youth will be given an apprenticeship of Rs 1 lakh per annum i.e Rs 8500 per month”. According to the video description, the rally was held in Bihar’s Bhagalpur. The Congress leader also promised Rs 8500 monthly for women from low-income families across India.

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You can read a report on it here.

Moving forward, we searched for relevant keywords and found the original video of Rahul Gandhi’s public meeting in Bhagalpur, Bihar. The video was streamed on Rahul Gandhi’s official YouTube channel on 20th April 2024. The viral clip can be seen from 12:41 to 12:55.

From the 9:30 timestamp, Rahul Gandhi says, “Narendra Modi has made India a centre of unemployment. Whenever you ask any youngster what they do… they say, they don’t do anything. They spend seven to eight hours on Instagram and Facebook. Why? Because Narendra Modi has spread unemployment everywhere. Narendra Modi has finished the people who would employ with demonetization and incorrect GST applications. The result is that employment cannot be created in India today.”

He said that the children of the rich get a year’s apprenticeship, get a temporary job, and make money. However, this facility is only available for some of India’s unemployed youth.

From the 11:00 timestamp, Rahul Gandhi mentioned a scheme called “Pehli Naukri Pakki” (First Job Assured). According to this scheme, all the country’s graduates and diploma holders will get a right to apprenticeship for a year with Rs 1,00,000 annually deposited into their bank accounts, equivalent to Rs 8,500 per month.

Rahul Gandhi Said,” The right to the first job means that all graduates and diploma holders will receive a one-year apprenticeship, with Rs 1,00,000 annually deposited into their bank accounts, which is equivalent to Rs 8,500 per month. They will get trained and if they do well in their first year, they will get a permanent job. These apprenticeship jobs will be available in private sector, public sector units and government sectors. This way, crores of young people will receive training, India will get a trained workforce. Our youth, who are now wandering around the streets and browsing Instagram and Facebook, will have Rs 1,00,000 per year (Rs 8500 per month) sent directly to their bank accounts by our government.”

The Right To Apprenticeship Act has been mentioned in the Congress Manifesto,2024.

Thus, we can conclude that the viral video has been cropped and shared with missing context. 

Conclusion

From our investigation, it is clear that Rahul Gandhi’s viral speech was shared with a missing context. Rahul Gandhi did not promise Rs 8500 monthly to the youth surfing social media. Instead, he said that their government would provide the right to an apprenticeship to all the graduates and diploma-holder youth of the country to create full-time job opportunities.