In a tribute to BJP and RSS ideologues and icons, the BJP-led NDA Government has named two national schemes after them.
Jaitley proposed Rs500 crore for Deen Dayal Upadhyay Rural Electrification Programme. Upadhyay was one of the most important leaders of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the forerunner of the present-day BJP. The scheme is to offer 24x7 power to rural areas by bifurcating the subsidised feeder lines from commercial lines.
Another Budget proposal named Rurban (Rural-Urban) Mission after Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the founder and the first president of the BJS.There was also a mention of lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly called JP,In the Budget, Jaitley proposed to set up a Centre of Excellence in MP named after JP. It is the call of ‘Sampoorna Kranti’ of JP that gravitated diverse opposition parties under the umbrella of ‘Janata Party’ and led to ouster of the Indira-Gandhi regime in 1978.
The Budget also proposed a Pt Madan Mohan Malaviya Teaching Programme to be started soon. Malaviya, a Congress president and founder of Banaras Hindu University, was known also for his espousal of Hindu nationalism.In the past, BJP had strongly criticized a plethora of national schemes, roads and institutes being regularly named after the members of the Nehru-Gandhi family.