New Delhi, December 1: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday shared a caricature to attack the central government over the backward revision of GDP data, which has resulted in lowering of growth figures during the Manmohan Singh-led UPA regime. Along with the caricature, the Gandhi scion posted a caption describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a "master of data manipulation".

The scathing attack from the Congress chief comes a couple of days after Ministers of the UPA-era locked horns with the BJP stalwarts, accusing the latter of misusing the Central Statistics Office for "malicious" political gains. GDP Numbers of Manmohan-era Slashed, Congress Alleges Foul Play.

Here is the caricature shared by Rahul Gandhi on Twitter:

The new numbers show India's economic growth rate averaged 6.7 per cent during the Congress-led UPA regime as compared to 7.3 per cent under the present government. Previous numbers had put the average growth rate during the 10-year UPA rule at 7.75 per cent.

As a political row broke out over the back series GDP data, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Thursday jumped in to defend the downward revision in growth rates during the previous UPA regime, saying the new numbers were reflective of real state of the economy.

With his predecessor P Chidambaram calling revised GDP growth rates "a bad joke" and "a hatchet job", Jaitley took the attack to the opposition camp saying the Congress leader had previously welcomed the GDP numbers based on a new series when the data was revised upwards for the last two years of the UPA regime but is now criticising when the same formula has been used to re-state the numbers of previous years.

"The new series is more broad-based and is a better reflection of the Indian economy. It is globally more comparable," he said as he defended the work of Central Statistics Office (CSO) -- the agency responsible for collating the data.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 01, 2018 04:57 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).