Prime Minister Narendra Modi lays foundation for AIIMS hospital and a key fertilizer plant, which was defunct for few decades, in Gorakhpur in east UP.
He is about to address a rally in Gorakhpur. Senior BJP MPs and ministers, Kalraj Mishra, Piyush Goyal, Yogi Adityanath are on stage.
To heal Dalits, Mr. Modi will take the development route and his speech is expected to appease them.
The Samajwadi party government and the NDA government have been in a war of words over the credit for AIIMS hospital in the run up.
In the last 30 years, over 50,000 children have died due to diseases like Japanese encephalitis in the region, Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath says, hailing the new AIIMS.
In December, 2015, CM Akhilesh Yadav had written to Mr. Modi to grant necessary approvals on a priority basis for the setting up the AIIMS.
AIIMS has been a long-held demand of the Purvanchal region, plagued by disease, poverty and migration.
Mr. Modi's address:
13.31: If anybody says the fertilizer plant is revived due to Modi, you are wrong. The credit goes to you, the people. Had you not elected me from UP and not given the BJP a one-sided victory, this project of 26 years would still not be achieved.
13.33: UP is our bulwark, without it we could not have formed a strong and stable government at the Centre.
13.35: If you want to develop UP, the rath of development will have to run on two wheels — West and East India. If the eastern wheel is not strong, if only the western wing is strong — Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Goa — and the eastern part — east UP, Bihar, Odisha, Assam, West Bengal -- is not strengthened, the Vikas Rath cannot move fast.
13.36: Second Green Revolution is going to come to East UP and eastern parts of India. Farmers need urea and fertilizers.
13.39: In an attack at the previous UPA government, he said it would import urea even as fertilizer plants in east UP were shut and no attempt was made to revive them.
13.43: People are always ready to criticize the government, if prices of vegetables increase, but they never remember the farmers and their rights.
13.45: It is natural to have a discussion on price rise in India but if prices are down there is hardly a murmur. Have you heard in the last 30 years if the cost of fertilzier has decreased? This is the first government that has done so.
13.46: Farmers will save Rs 50 per bag of fertilizer, the first government to think on these lines.
14.01: The AIIMS in Gorakhpur will be a 700 bed hi-tech hospital, it will cost 1,000 crores.
14.09: Centre giving sufficient funds but State govermentis not interested in utilizing it as it is incapable of working and delivering to people better health.
