Alleging that the Congress lacked a vision for development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said here on Saturday that the Opposition hated the NDA government because of its programmes for the poor, which were not confined to paper.
Addressing a huge gathering, the Prime Minister said the Congress was now being called a bail gaadi (bail cart) — a play on the Hindi phrase bayl gaadi for bullock cart — with several of its leaders out on bail in various cases. He was apparently referring to Shashi Tharoor and Karti Chidambaram.
Launching a blistering attack on the Congress at the meeting with beneficiaries of the government’s flagship schemes, he sounded the poll bugle in Rajasthan, where the Assembly elections are due in December.
Style of work
He said there was a class of people who lost sleep when they “hear the name of Modi or [Vasundhara] Raje”. “In our style of work, things neither get stuck nor are they left hanging or wandering,” he said.
Accusing the Congress of raising doubts about the Army, in a reference to the surgical strikes into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in 2016, and indulging in politics even on the issues of national security, Mr. Modi said the Opposition party’s attitude was shaped by the way its governments had functioned in the past. “They had no regard for public sentiments and no vision for development,” he said.
The Prime Minister said that while the NDA government had resolved the “one rank, one pension” issue for defence personnel, the Opposition parties had “committed the sin” of questioning the credentials of the Army, putting national security in jeopardy.
He said the Centre was working hard for doubling farmers’ income by 2022 and had increased minimum support prices for agricultural produce.
Mr. Modi cited an international study to claim that the government had helped five crore people come out of poverty during the past two years. In Rajasthan, 80 lakh toilets had been constructed, 2.5 crore Jan Dhan Yojana accounts were opened and six lakh poor people were offered homes, he said.
Congress reaction
Reacting sharply to Mr. Modi’s remarks, the Congress said the Prime Minister had blurred the line between a government programme and an election campaign. “The rally was organised by spending a colossal amount of public money. Mr. Modi exploited the occasion for only targeting the Congress, which is going from strength to strength in Rajasthan,” Pradesh Congress president Sachin Pilot said.
Mr. Pilot said ₹1,500 crore were spent on organising the programme, which was used for making “hollow claims” regarding the government's so-called achievements.
“The reality is that the poor, Dalits, youths, unemployed people, farmers and women are suffering in the BJP rule. The Prime Minister did not make any specific announcement for Rajasthan,” he said.
The Prime Minister said the Centre would sympathetically consider Rajasthan’s demand for national project status for its ambitious Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP), which would benefit 13 districts and 40% of the State's population by creating irrigation potential at 2 lack hectares of land and resolve the problem of shortage of drinking water.
Mr. Modi also unveiled 13 urban infrastructure projects with a total outlay of ₹2,100 crore and witnessed an audio-visual presentation of experience sharing by 12 beneficiaries of schemes. Over 2 lakh people who arrived from all the 33 districts of the State took part in the rally, billed as Pradhan Mantri-Labhaarthi Jan Samvad, at Amrudon Ka Bagh grounds in the heart of Jaipur city.
Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, State BJP president Madan Lal Saini and other leaders attended the rally, which was organised as a State government's programme. Mr. Modi was presented with a model of plough in an attempt to highlight the benefits extended to farmers.
