Castigating the BJP-led NDA Government on the occasion of its completion of 100 days in office, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Tuesday charged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had centralised power in his hands in the garb of providing “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” to the country.
Targetting the NDA Government for its failure to keep the promises made during the lok Sabha polls, Chavan said: “In his lok Sabha poll campaign, Modi claimed that he would provide minimum Government and maximum governance to the people in the country. But, in the name of providing minimum Government, Modi has centralised power with himself. What we are seeing today is one-man rule in the country.”
“In his bid to ensure against decentralisation of power, Modi has kept the number of Ministers in his Cabinet to a bare minimum. So powerless are the Ministers inducted by him into his Cabinet that they cannot even choose their personal secretaries. One gets to hears several interesting stories on how Modi keeps his Ministers under surveillance and how badly he treats the bureaucrats,” Chavan said, while addressing a news conference at the State Congress headquarters “Tilak Bhavan” here. “It is out and out a one-man show. That there is no place for anyone other than Modi in the BJP can be evidenced from the manner in which senior leaders lK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi were sidelined in the party. These two veteran leaders came to be dropped from the BJP’s Parliamentary Board. This is the kind of democratic set up that exists within the BJP today,” the Chief Minister said.
Chavan also came down heavily on the Modi government for the manner in which it forced out several of the UPA-appointed Governors from the office. “The Modi government transfers the Maharashtra Governor all of sudden to Mizoram and that shortly after midnight and appoints an interim Governor in his place. Within next two days, the Government appointed a full-fledged Governor for Maharashtra,” he said.
Slamming the NDA government for encouraging the BJP workers to heckle the democratically elected chief ministers of Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand at official functions in the presence of Prime Minister, Chavan said that the Centre-staste relations had come under strain following recent incidents involving the humiliation of chief ministers by the ruling party workers in Modi’s functions.
Maharashtra Pradesh Congrtess Committee president Manikarao Thakre, who addressed the news conference jointly with the chief minister, was equally critical of the Modi government for its failure to keep its poll promises.
“Modi has not kept even one of his poll promises. Instead, he is busy inaugurating the projects completed by the UPA government. He has been treating the Governors and chief ministers of the Opposition-ruled states shabbily. He promised that one of the priorities of his government would be to bring back black money stashed away in banks. But, in the 100 days in office, the Modi government has not brought back to India even Rs 100 from abroad. Instead of bringing down the prices of essential commodities, this government has contributed to the increase in prices,” Thakre said.