Narendra Modi projects NDA as "pro-poor"
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attacked the opposition for trying to
project the government as anti-poor on the issue of the Land Acquisition
Bill and said that some people had decided not to speak, see or hear
anything good about the NDA government.
On a day that
the Congress organised a farmers rally here against the Land Bill, Mr.
Modi said lies were been spread on the Bill by "perverted minds",
clearly indicating that the government was not going to withdraw the
proposed legislation.
"Don’t measure us on the scale
of raj-niti (politics) but on rashtra-niti (nationalism)," the Prime
Minister said while outlaying the government’s poverty alleviation
programmes during the inaugural session of a day-long workshop for the
BJP Parliamentary Party.
"Our path is clear: we are working in the direction of fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of the poor," he said.
Expressing
the confidence that the second part of the Budget session of Parliament
beginning Monday will be productive, the Prime Minister asked party MPs
to come out of being in "opposition mould" and go into the session
"holding their head high" for the pro-poor measures taken by the
government since it came to power last May.
Mr. Modi
seized the occasion to lament that that some of the media was so taken
up by being critical of his government that its achievements such as the
recent evacuation of Indians from strife-torn Yemen and getting uranium
supply from Canada and nuclear reactor technology from France during
his recent visit to these countries, were underplayed.
Hailing
Union Minister of State General V.K. Singh for the successful operation
in Yemen he said he "salutes" him. He also lauded External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj for her quick responses to distress calls and
said the two ministers should be felicitated.
Stressing
on the "Beti Bachao, Beti Padao" campaign, Mr. Modi observed that
unless Muslim, Dalit, Adivasi, Backward community girls were educated
the country will not progress. Unlike before, the government had
universalised its programmes for housing, pension and Jan Dhan Yojna, he
said.
He said that since his call, about four lakh
affluent people had given up LPG gas subsidy. The government now plans
to use the Rs. 200 crore saving that had accrued for replacing fuel
burners in villages.
Taking a dig at the Congress, he
said it was alright [for Rajiv Gandhi] to say that of Re 1 given for
central schemes, only 15 paise reached people in villages and asked: but
where was the solution?
He urged BJP MPs to ensure
that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme was
utilised properly in villages to create assets and money reached the
poor so that the rural purchasing power goes up.
Asserting
that India was being looked at internationally as the fastest growing
economy, he spelt out figures to show that inflation including food
prices, had gone down in the last one year and growth was up.
As he was leaving, Mr. Modi walked into a group of journalists and exchanged pleasantries ,but declined to take any questions.
Earlier,
Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said the Land Bill was
a "progressive" piece of legislation aimed to make India "strong".
Mocking
the Congress slogan of "zameen vapasi" (return of land), he said indeed
the party should return to farmers the acres of land it acquired in
Haryana and elsewhere under the UPA. "We have not acquired any land."
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