NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government’s sharp focus on employment generation through Make in India and Skill India initiatives appears to have paid off, with India adding more than double the number of jobs between July and December 2014 compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. According to a labour ministry survey released on Wednesday, 2.75 lakh jobs were created in eight key sectors during the six months, an increase of 118 per cent over 1.26 lakh jobs created in the year-ago period.The number of jobs created in the October-December quarter at 1.17 lakh was, however, less than 1.58 lakh jobs created in the previous quarter or 1.82 lakh jobs created in the April-June quarter.Accelerating job creation in the country is one of the 10-point economic agenda of the BJP-led NDA government unveiled by President Pranab Mukherjee in June, days after the government assumed charge on May 26. The major objective of Make in India campaign is to focus on 25 sectors of the economy for job creation and skill enhancement. Besides, the new government set up a dedicated skill development ministry to focus on imparting skills to millions of youth in the country to make them employable. It is estimated that 12 million youth enter the country’s workforce each year and over 5 per cent of this are skilled workforce “There is certainly an upswing in the number of jobs created in the country. But that is largely because of improvement in sentiments and the huge optimism around the initiatives of the new government. However, the real test is now and it is time that the government actually took steps to execute some of its labour related initiatives so as to sustain the momentum,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, president of the Indian Staffing Federation.The 24th quarterly survey, conducted by labour ministry, covered 2,077 sample units across eight selected sectors that included apparels, leather, metals, automobiles, gems & jewellery, transport, IT/BPO and handloom/powerloom. As per the survey, IT/BPOs led the sectors in job creation, with 89,000 new jobs, followed by 79,000 jobs created in textile and apparels and 1,000 in leather sector.“While employment of direct workers went up by 1.01 lakh, hiring of contract workers was up by 16,000 during the quarter ended December, 2014 and a significant portion of the workforce were employed in units catering to the domestic market with employment in non-exporting units higher by 82,000 while number of people employed in exporting units up by 35,000 during the October-December quarter,” the survey said. India created 59.9 million jobs during the previous BJP rule between 1998 and 2004.Between 2004-05 and 2009-10, the country created just 1.1 million jobs and during 2009-10 and 2011-12, 13.9 million new jobs were added.