Taking a dig at the Opposition parties on the issue of corruption, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said that his opponents were now holding rallies to save the corrupt instead of electoral campaigning.
“I am also busy saving my country and my family from loot. And that’s why I say remove corruption. What do they say? They say save the corrupt. They are not holding election rallies. They are holding rallies to save the corrupt,” said Mr. Modi, at a rally in Chhote Amabal, a village in the outskirts of Bastar district of Chhattisgarh.
The Prime Minister was indirectly referring to the March 31 rally of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) at Delhi’s Ramila Maidan, where its constituents expressed solidarity with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren. Both the leaders have been arrested in separate cases by the Enforcement Directorate.
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Cancelled Congress’ ‘licence to loot’
Earlier, Mr. Modi said that he had ended Congress’ corruption with public support.
“After coming to power in 2014, Modi has cancelled the licence of Congress’ looting, and this has only been possible due to the immense support of the public. Congress is criticising Modi today only because the shop of loot has been closed. However, Congress does not know that crores of people, including mothers and sisters, have stood as Modi’s shield for the protection of the nation,” he said.
Contrasting direct fund transfers under his rule with what he alleged was looting orchestrated by the Congress before 2014, Mr. Modi recalled a statement by former PM Rajiv Gandhi in which he had stated that only 15 paise out of every rupee released by the government actually reached the intended beneficiary.
“The BJP government has directly transferred ₹34 lakh crore to the accounts of beneficiaries in the last 10 years. If there was a Congress government in the country, Congress would have looted ₹28 lakh crore out of this ₹34 lakh crore,” he said.
Asserting that stringent action was being taken against corruption across the nation, including in Chhattisgarh, Mr. Modi alleged that Congress leaders were threatening to break his head with sticks. This was a purported response to a recent statement by Chhattisgarh Leader of the Opposition and senior Congress leader Charandas Mahant that had sparked a controversy.
Addressing a public rally in Rajnandgaon, where the party has fielded former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, last week, Mr. Mahant highlighted the need to confront Mr. Modi, saying: “We need a protector who can stand up against Narendra Modi, and your MP (referring to Mr. Baghel) is that person. We need a man (candidate) who can wield a stick and break Narendra Modi’s head”. While he later clarified that he was using a Chhattisgarhi idiom, an FIR was registered against him after the local BJP complaint and the issue resurfaced at the Bastar rally.
During his address, Mr. Modi also criticised the Congress and other INDIA bloc party leaders for skipping the Ram Temple consecration ceremony held in January and said that those who had attended the rallies were expelled from the party. He also alleged that Congress’ manifesto had an imprint of the erstwhile Muslim League during the freedom movement.
Underlining that the welfare of the poor was his topmost priority, Mr. Modi listed out several initiatives his government had launched for the people. Among them, he mentioned the Ayushman Bharat Yojana offering free treatment of up to ₹5 lakh, and over 11,000 Jan Aushadhi centres providing medicines at 80% discount saving ₹30,000 crore for the poor.
Towards the concluding part of his speech, he also highlighted the initiatives taken up for tribals formulated by the BJP at the State and the Centre.
At the event that marked the launch of the BJP’s campaign in Chhattisgarh, Mr. Modi also claimed that as the Prime Minister, he had made several visits to Bastar region.
Remembering late BJP leader
Addressing a sizeable crowd that had gathered from different parts of Bastar region, Mr. Modi remembered his close association with late Baliram Kashyap, a former MP and one of the foundational figures of the BJP in the region.
The two Lok Sabha seats of Bastar — Bastar and Kanker — go to the polls on April 19 and 26, in the first and second phases respectively.
Bastar was one of the two seats the BJP had lost in 2019, but Rukmini Yadav, an ex-municipal councillor who had come to attend the rally from Jagdalpur city, reckoned that the party was in a better position this time. “A large number of beneficiaries of Central schemes and recent State ones like Mahtari Vandan Yojana in the impoverished region could improve our performance and we already saw that in the Assembly polls,” she added.
