Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched a counter-offensive against the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi during an election rally here on Sunday. He accused Modi of indulging in negative politics by resorting to lies and slander against opponents.
Dr Singh cautioned the BJP ahead of the November 25 Assembly election against taking politics to a level that only smacks of contempt.
“The BJP leaders should weigh their comments before saying anything,” he said. “Instead of telling people what good they will do if voted to power, the BJP leaders are only interested in demeaning their rivals,” the PM pointed out.
Brought in rapid progress, says PM
The Prime Minister chose the Jabalpur rally to set the record straight and directly addressing the voters said: “Only a party which has given a government with a clean record has the right to form a government.” The Congress-led UPA has been in power for nine years.
“The Congress believes in economic progress and is committed to improving the quality of life of the common people. It has tried to fulfill the dreams of great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad and Sardar Patel and done everything to build a modern nation.”
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Dr Singh said the Opposition which criticises the Congress by saying it has failed on the development front should look properly at “our track-record.” “In the last nine-year period, there has been rapid progress, three-fold increase in the rate of poverty reduction and rural income has gone up substantially.
National Rural Health Mission, a flagship programme of the Government of India, has brought health services to the doorsteps of people in the villages and polio has been completely eliminated from this country.
The Right to Education Act has revolutionised the spread of education and about 11 crore children are benefiting from the mid-day meal scheme,” the Prime Minister said and praised his UPA government for building new IIMs and IITs.
A vast majority of country’s population lives in villages and a vast section of people rely on agriculture for their living. To ensure people get the right price for their produce, the procurement price has been more than doubled in the last nine years, he said.
On record foodgrain production, Dr Singh gave credit to the farmers and said that the Food Security Act is a result of their hard work. The Mahatma Gandhi NREGA has gone a long way in providing employment to 8 crore people, he added.
Rebutting the BJP charge that the UPA government has discriminated against Madhya Pradesh in allocating Central funds under various schemes, Dr Singh said that the state had received '83,000 crores from the Centre. Giving a breakup of this money, he accused the state BJP government of failure to properly utilise the funds meant for the benefit of the people.
Dr Singh urged the people to vote out the BJP as he went on to point out that the state ruled by the BJP for last 10 years was lagging behind on a number of development indices. “Madhya Pradesh is among those states that are at the bottom in terms of literacy and the situation vis-à-vis infant mortality is also grim,” he said.
Earlier addressing the voters, Union minister Kamal Nath said that the state BJP government’s track-record for the last 10-years “is before us”.
“Madhya Pradesh has been turned into the most corrupt state by the BJP,” he observed. “It is a tragedy that good students from poor families do not get admission in engineering and medical colleges while those who can pay a hefty amount get enrolled in these colleges.”
On the issue of compensation to hail-hit farmers spread throughout the state, Nath said that Dr Singh had assured help under calamity relief. Taking a dig at state chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, he said, instead of getting a survey done on priority for seeking Central assistance, the chief minister was busy in his “Ashirwad Yatra” to seek people’s vote in the Assembly election.
