Samikhsya Bureau
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today criticized Congress for electioneering around poverty removal and called it a poll plank that the Grand Old Party has used since decades.
Addressing the Vijay Sankalp Samavesh in Odisha’s Bhawanipatna today, the Prime Minister cited an example of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s statement that detailed how up to 85 percent of the funds released by the government are looted by the middlemen.
“They knew the issue and they were in power for long. Why didn’t they fix it then? Much after Rajiv Gandhi, the UPA government boasted that the poor receive up to 16 paise out of every 1 rupee released by the government. Didn’t they see that 84 paise were still being looted? What did they do about it? It takes a Modi government to show courage to tame corruption and we did by implementing direct benefit transfer,” said Modi.
He further alleged that the opposition parties have come together with their single point agenda of ‘Modi hatao’ since they are losing their income under his watch.
He further took on the Naveen government and questioned why people of Odisha were looking for jobs elsewhere despite having a stable government since past 19 years in the state.
Despite being in power for 19 years, this government has not been able to change Odisha. They are accused of involvement in chitfund scam and mining scam. Do you want to vote mining mafias, he asked the public.
“They are taking your votes for granted. You need to seek answers from them. This is the time for change. You need to vote for double engine of growth this time. You need to vote the ‘chowkidar’ and strengthen the government,” he added while critisizing the state government for blocking Ayusman Bharat yojana and PM-KISAN scheme.
He also cited the works done by his government for the state such as 8 lakh pucca houses, 24 lakh free electricity connections, 40 lakh free gas connections under ujjwala scheme, 1.4 lakh new bank accounts & 50 lakh toilets among others.
