New Delhi: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah on Tuesday blasted the rival Congress party by terming the Narendra Modi government as a visible government.
“The biggest achievement is restoring confidence of the people in the government,” Shah listed as the biggest achievement of the Modi government that completed one year in office Tuesday.
Shah took on the Congress party which has been critical of the Modi government and trying to paint it as anti-poor and anti-farmer.
“This is a visible government. The earlier government needed to be found … This government has restored the dignity of the Prime Minister’s Office. In the Congress (party) regime PM was no PM,” Shah said while addressing a press conference at the BJP’s central office.
The press conference was part of the BJP weeklong celebration, under which 200 rallies and 500 meetings are planned in different parts of the country to spread out achievements of the year-old government. Prime Minister Modi had inaugurated the celebration by addressing a mega rally in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh on Monday.
Modi in his address, too, had lambasted the Congress party by listing removal of the remote control as one of the achievements of his government.
The BJP had all along accused the Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi of running the federal government by remote control and termed her as the Super Prime Minister, suggesting the then prime minister Manmohan Singh was just a Gandhi puppet.
Smarting under the Congress party vice president Rahul Gandhi’s constant onslaught particularly over Modi government’s contentious Land Acquisition Bill, the BJP has decided that besides listing Modi government’s achievements, it would simultaneously expose the Congress party by listing their failures during the 10 year rule that ended with an embarrassing drubbing last year.
Besides rallies, meetings and press conferences, the BJP has also planned tours of 350 specially designed mobile vans to all 643 districts of the country to showcase the government’s achievements and initiatives through audiovisual clips.
“It is a visible government and is seen as taking proactive steps, unlike the (Congress party-led) UPA (United Progressive Alliance) where no answers were given. The Modi government has restored the dignity of the Prime Minister’s Office, Shah said.
Shah navigated a tricky question about allegations that BJP after coming to power had put on back burner some of its core issues and pro-Hindu agenda that helped it become a party of two MPs in 1984 to getting majority on its own last year.
“We have not got enough mandate to address the core issues. We need 370 seats according to the Constitution to address them,” Shah said in response to a question regarding no effort being made by the Modi government to work on abrogation of Article 370 that gives the state of Jammu and Kashmir status of a special state and construction of a grand Hindu temple in Ayodhya in place of the razed Babri mosque.
What Shah meant by referring to 370 seats is the two-third majority required to amend the Constitution.
Shah, a close confidante of Modi, replied to all questions hurled at him with confidence and brushed aside all criticism of the government by asserting that the opposition had failed to level even a single charge of corruption against the Modi government.
Shah sounded confident that BJP was poised to grab power in poll-bound Bihar, terming Bihar as very important and saying BJP’s doors were ajar for possible pre-poll tie-up with new allies.
In the meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi dropped to the BJP central office in the evening to interact with party workers. He said it was not planned and he thought of meeting party workers only in the morning. He was seen asking for their welfare and calling them by name to re-establish connections with the workers in the midst of suggestions that the party workers were feeling ignored after BJP came to power exactly a year ago.
