The Defence Minister lashed out at the critics of the NDA Government for what he said was, manufacturing issues out of non-issues and said that the pace of work set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Government was unsettling the Opposition.
Parrikar also said that several key Defence infrastructure related projects, which had been severely delayed due to poor governance by the erstwhile UPA Government, were being speeded up by his Ministry.
“In a political set up when someone works, the other feels restless. look at the Centre, the same thing is happening...” Parrikar said while addressing a Government function at Mandur, 15 kms from Panaji.
The Minister was referring to the Opposition incessantly taking the Government on over the allegations that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje helping lalit Modi obtain travel documents.
“If you can’t find any (flaw in governance), then they go about harping on a non-issue for as many as six days. If you see that, people are actually worried about the fact that a lot of work is getting done by our government,” Parrikar said.
“If you draw up a list of works done by our central government in the last one year... Many things which were stuck are moving ahead,” Parrikar said.
“When I became Defence Minister, many defence infrastructure projects were stuck. Over the last six-seven months I tried to speed them up. It is not up to my satisfaction yet, for that it may take six months more,” he said, adding that the previous Government moved at a very sluggish pace and used the example slow progress of border roads to prove his point.
He said that the rate of border road construction slowed down to as much as one foot per day simply because of the non-availability of automatic drills to cut through rock.
“Some border road projects were such that they would move at the rate of only one foot per day. One foot per day. Really there are difficulties there. The rocks there are difficult to break. Blasting cannot be done, because Himalaya is a very fragile mountain, trhe whole thing may come down,” Parrikar said.