Rahul Gandhi attacked PM Modi over reports that India economy had entered a technical recession

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over reports that, for the first time in history, the India economy had entered a technical recession in the first half of 2020-21.

In a tweet today, Mr Gandhi posted screen shots of a newspaper report about the economic downturn to make his point.

The Indian economy likely shrunk for a second straight quarter, pushing the country into an unprecedented recession, according to a team of economists that included Michel Patra, the Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor in charge of monetary policy.

"India has entered a technical recession in the first half of 2020-21 for the first time in its history," the authors of the report wrote. The government is expected to official statistics on November 27.

The country's GDP contracted by 8.6 per cent in the quarter ended September, the RBI showed in its first ever published "nowcast", an estimate based on high-frequency data. The economy had slumped about 24 per cent in April to June.

The government is expected to publish official statistics on November 27.

"There is a grave risk of generalization of price pressures, unanchoring of inflation expectations feeding into a loss of credibility in policy interventions," the economists wrote in the Reserve Bank's bulletin. They also highlighted risks to global growth from a second wave of coronavirus infections.

The pandemic-induced lockdowns had led to a steep contraction of 23.9 per cent in GDP for the April-June quarter as compared to the same period a year ago. The RBI has estimated that the economy will contract by 9.5 per cent for the full fiscal year, according to PTI.

The article, however, has said that the contraction in the economy is "ebbing with gradual normalisation in activities and expected to be short-lived".