Making an attack on rival parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he was made of ‘alag mitti’ as his Government was fully devoted towards making the poor strong and helping them fight poverty, in contrast to the policies of earlier Governments that primarily concentrated how to increase their ‘vote-bank’.
Addressing the gathering at Assi Ghat after distributing e-boats to 11 beneficiaries, Modi said that the political parties have been doing this ‘Karobaar’ (trade) only to increase their vote-bank, instead of making efforts to make the poor strong to fight against poverty.
When Modi arrived at Assi Ghat where on December 25, 2014 he had launched a cleanliness drive and naming his ‘Navratnas’ , he was welcomed with traditional slogan of ‘Har Har Mahadev and Modi himself started his address with the same slogan amidst the cheering of thousands of people packed on the stairs of Assi and adjoining ghats.
“The e-boats equipped with solar panel would help you to save a lot of money but the saved money should be used in imparting education to your wards, treatment of your ailing mothers and family members and improvement of your own life instead of wasting the same in other work (indicating at drinking ),” he asked the boatmen who received the e-boats, adding that a large number of such boats would be replaced with diesel-run boats creating water and sound pollution. According to him, this would make a lot of changes in coming years as such e-boats would attract the tourists because these e-boats have the facilities of charging mobile phones also.
Highlighting the schemes of his Government, he said that his Government had brought all the schemes for the poor. Citing Jan Dhan Yojna, he said that when the Government had asked the banks to open accounts of those 40 per cent poor who had never entered the banks earlier on zero balance, the banks had raised several doubts but they were themselves surprised as within a short time 21 crore bank accounts were opened and the poor showed their richness depositing Rs35,000 crores.
Not only this, he said that the Government has launched Mudra Yojna for giving loans to poor without taking any guarantees so that they could start their own business without being trapped in grips of money -lenders and under the scheme 3.3 crores people had already taken loans of Rs1.25 lakh crores and out of total who took loans 22 per cent were women.
He also highlighted the benefits of the Ujjawala Yojana launched by him earlier in the day in Ballia and said that during the next three years five crore poor families would be given lPG connections and it would not only check pollution but also improve the health of the poor families.
Making an indirect attack on the Congress without naming the party, he said that just a few days ago the country had launched seven navigation satellite system successfully but his Government did not name it after any party leader or family leaders as the earlier Government did but named it NAVIC to respect the fishermen community.
According to him, he believed in making small things to bring the big changes in the life of the poor and concluding his address he strongly appealed to the Banarasis to continue cleanliness drive to make the city beautiful and more attractive.
The function was also attended by UK high commissioner Sir Dominic Asquith, UP minister Brahma Shankar Tripathi, state BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, in-charge of BJP affairs in UP Om Mathur, mayor Ram Gopal Mohley, regional chief and MlC laxman Acharya, MlAs Jyotsna Srivastava and Ravindra Jaiswal and BMC MD Vijay Pandey.