23 lakh crore jobs created: Chandrababu Naidu’s slip of tongue goes viral

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu sparked controversy at Davos after mistakenly claiming that investment commitments worth Rs 23 lakh crore would generate “23 lakh crore jobs.” Though he quickly corrected himself to “23 lakh jobs,” the slip went viral online.

Hyderabad: When a Chief Minister claims he has created more jobs than his State’s population, there surely has to be something to it, especially if the Chief Minister in question is known to make quite unbelievable claims frequently.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who has recently been on a self-promoting spree with multiple claims, including that of getting the Centre to merge certain villages with Andhra against Telangana’s wishes, and also that it was because of him that so many Telugus were working in Europe, not to forget his most repeated claim of building Hyderabad made all these claims look small compared to one claim that he made at Davos, one that was so wild that he ‘corrected’ himself within minutes.

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In an interview with NDTV’s Rahul Kanwal, Naidu claimed that he had secured investment commitments into Andhra Pradesh worth nearly Rs 23 lakh crore over the past 18 months through memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with companies including Google, IBM and Wipro.

Along with that, he also claimed that the investments would generate “23 lakh crore jobs”. This claim, as wild as it can be, even took Kanwal aback, who can be heard repeating that claim. “23 lakh crore?” Naidu, immediately realising that he had gone wrong, goes on to say the investments would be in the range of Rs 20-22 lakh crore and that these would generate 23 lakh jobs.

However, that one slip of the tongue was enough for the Internet to latch on to it. Edited clips, that end with the 23 lakh crore jobs claim, were shared widely, with fact-checker and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair also posting the video, pointing out that somehow, though Naidu had corrected himself, NDTV had edited that part from their YouTube channel.

Many others pointed out that even the 23 lakh jobs was a clear exaggeration. But given Naidu’s tendency for far-fetched claims, social media had a field day discussing the 23 lakh crore job figure.

This small part of the video is viral on SM. But @rahulkanwal, Why was this part of the interview deleted from your NDTV YT channel?
“I have provided 23 lakh cr jobs”
Rahul Kanwal: 23 lakh crore jobs??
Andhra CM : 20 Lakh Cr jobs… 20 lakh crore+
Rahul Kanwal: Oh OK.. pic.twitter.com/nzei9JoYpL

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) January 23, 2026