Earlier today, news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) misquoted PM Modi on the decline of the percentage of active Chinese coronavirus cases in the country. Prime Minister, while interacting with the Chief Ministers of tens states of India had said that in the past few weeks, the percentage of active coronavirus cases in the country has been coming down.
However, PTI misquoted him, claiming that the Prime Minister meant that the number of active coronavirus cases in the country has come down. Soon after PTI posted a grossly misleading tweet that the Prime Minister of the country has alleged that the number of the coronavirus cases in the country is on the wane, the principal opposition party, Congress, co-opted PTI’s misquoted tweet, to allege that PM Modi has lied to the nation.
“And the most predictable news of the day: The PM has lied to the nation again,” the official Twitter handle of the Congress party tweeted before cross-checking the veracity of the PM’s quote as tweeted by the PTI. The Congress party also attached the screenshot of the PTI’s misquoted tweet about PM Modi along with the graph that showed a steady rise in the number of active cases in the country.
However, in its rush to paint the Prime Minister of the country as a liar and tarnish his reputation, the Congress party did not bother to verify the quotes wrongly attributed to PM Modi by the news agency PTI.
The active coronavirus cases in India
While the total number of active coronavirus cases in the country has been increasing, the rate at which it is increasing in the past few days is steadily declining. This means that the total number of the active coronavirus cases are increasing but so are the recoveries.
As per the details shared by the Press Information Bureau (PIB), one can notice a consistent decline in the total percentage of active cases.
As can be seen above, the recovery rate is currently at almost 70%, which means almost 70% of total Chinese coronavirus patients in India have recovered. The same was about 51% on June 15. While India has still not peaked (where daily recoveries are more than daily new active cases consistently), the above graph shows that India is well on its path to recovery.
Hence, even though the number of active cases is rising consistently, the percentage of active cases in India is seeing a steady decline.
When the social media users responded to the Congress party’s Twitter handle about the lie that they had been peddling based on the fallacious tweet by the PTI, the party was swift in pulling down the tweet in which it called the Prime Minister a liar.
Congress, a well-oiled fake news factory
Contrary to what the Congress party would have us believe that the Prime Minister of the country lies to the nation, it is Congress and its most important leader-Rahul Gandhi, who have been caught multiple times spreading lies, in a desperate attempt to malign the BJP and PM Modi.
In the run-up to the 2019 General elections, Rahul Gandhi weaved an elaborate web of lies to indict the government of corruption in an imaginary Rafale scam. Unsubstantiated allegations of misappropriation, corruption, graft and cronyism were levelled against PM Modi and the BJP with regards to the Rafale deal, so as to cast a dent in PM Modi’s popularity and dampen the prospects of the BJP in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
However, Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party’s assiduously crafted web of lies was shattered when the Supreme Court of the country observed that there was no wrongdoing on the government’s part in the Rafale deal.
Much recently, Rahul Gandhi attempted to exploit the raging coronavirus pandemic and the hardships faced by migrant workers to mount an attack against the Modi government. Armed with fake news, Rahul Gandhi slammed the Modi government, alleging that the Centre is profiting from the miseries of the migrant workers. He alleged that the government had earned profits from the trains that were meant to ferry the migrant workers back to their homes.
However, as is the case with Rahul Gandhi, his untenable lies did not take much time to fall flat. According to the official data, far from earning profits from the Shramik trains, the government borne the losses of approximately Rs 1700 crores to ferry the distraught migrants back to their native places.
The above two examples are examples of how Congress lies to show the government in a bad light. There are several other instances when the Congress party has lied. The archive of those instances can be found here. While the archive may not be exhaustive, but the preponderance of incidents when Congress has lied to the nation is reflective of its tendency of using lies to attack its opponents.
