PM launches key UP canal project, hits out at Opposition for delay in work
Balrampur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday exhorted farmers to adopt natural farming saying it will help not only save water but also produce better crops, and invited them to join a mega programme on it on December 16 as it would prove beneficial to them. He was addressing a rally in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur after inaugurating the Saryu Canal National Project, which will meet the irrigation needs of over 14 lakh hectares of land and benefit 29 lakh farmers. The PM also took a jibe at Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav who has often claimed that the works of his government are being projected as the achievements of the BJP government, saying that he was waiting if anyone will claim the credit for the Saryu Canal National Project. “When I started from Delhi, I was waiting for someone to say that he had cut the ribbon of this project and started this scheme. This is the habit of some people,” he said, without taking any names. “For some people cutting ribbon is the priority while for us completing schemes in time is the priority,” he said.
The SP chief who was at the helm before the BJP government took over in 2017 has been criticising the Yogi government for claiming credit for the works done by his government.
In a tweet after PM Modi inaugurated the Saryu project in Balrampur, Yadav said, “There are basically two types of people in the world, some who really work and some who appropriate others’ work.”
“This is the difference between the government of the SP and today's ‘kainchijivi’ (ribbon cutting) government. That's why in the 2022 elections, the BJP is going to be completely wiped out,” Yadav said in another tweet.
According to official sources, the work on the Saryu project started in 1978 but due to lack of continuity of budgetary support, interdepartmental coordination and adequate monitoring, it got delayed and was not completed even after nearly four decades.
Speaking about the unnecessary delay in the project, Modi said, “Most painful is the waste and misuse of the country’s money, time and resources and its humiliation. This thinking is the biggest hurdle in the balanced development of the country and this thinking has also stalled the Saryu Nahar project.”
The completion of the Saryu canal project is an example that if “soch imandar, kaam damdaar” (honest thinking, solid work), he said, referring to the BJP’s slogan for the Uttar Pradesh polls. The waters of Ghaghra, Saryu, Rapti, Baanganga and Rohin will bring a new phase of prosperity in the region, he said.
All the citizens of the country should understand that when the work on this project was started its cost was under Rs100 crore and now it is about Rs 10,000 crore.
