As Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried out a roadshow in Varanasi on Thursday as part of his campaign for the Lok Sabha seat, the Congress accused him of not fulfilling his promises to the electorate.
For Varanasi, the seat that Mr. Modi had won in 2014 with a huge margin, the BJP had brought out a vision document that highlighted how the constituency would be “transformed into Kyoto”, Congress spokesperson Ragini Nayak said at a press conference here.
“The roadshow is being done so that the real issues get drowned out in noise... This time, the people of Benaras will not forgive Mr. Modi,” she said.
She said the promise of cleaning the River Ganga had not been kept as “70% of the work in Namami Gange programme has not even started and 80% of the funds for it remain unused”. She said as part of the construction of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor, over 300 buildings were demolished and many temples affected. On making Varanasi a “smart city”, she said “only 9% of the funds have been spent” and the Right to Information requests regarding the progress of the work keep getting shunted from one authority to the other. She said the villages “adopted” by the Prime Minister as a part of the Adarsh Gram Yojana had seen no development work as of a June 2018 RTI reply.
