Starting today, Mint launches an online, and occasionally offline, feature that will verify the accuracy of claims made by all political parties in the run up to state elections later this year and a general election next year. We will, as is our wont, be honest equal opportunity offenders, and pick from relevant, salient, and important comments from across the political spectrum, and then, assess the veracity of these statements by seeking data. If you come across any comment that is in the public domain and which you’d like researched, do send it to us at claimcheck@livemint.com, and we will try to do our best.

Happy claim checking.

R. Sukumar

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Based on the numbers, Sanjay Jha’s claim on a Times Now show claiming Gujarat’s social indices are the worst among Indian states, doesn’t pass muster. A look at figures for the infant mortality rate, maternal mortality ratio, poverty rate, literacy rate and the percentage of treated tap water, shows that while Gujarat isn’t the leading state on any of these measures, it certainly isn’t the worst either. In fact, on all these parameters Gujarat fares better than the India average. Not that there is much for Narendra Modi to be proud of – while 17 states did worse than Gujarat in terms of the literacy rate, the same number of states and all the union territories outperformed Gujarat on the infant mortality rate parameter.

Net net, a check on Sanjay Jha’s claim proves it is FALSE.

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