A ccusing the Congress of current plight of the youth, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said that had the Congress thought of it two decades back with concrete roadmap to utilise power of youth in nation building, the situation of young people in the country might have been different.
Speaking at the third convocation ceremony of Gandhinagar-based Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Petroleum University (PDPU) on Saturday, the Gujarat Chief Minister said that if youth would be involved in development process of the country, loss occurred in the past 60 years (under the Congress-ruled Governments) can be recovered in a decade.
“During the six years of the Vajpayee Government nearly 6 crore youngsters got employment, while during the nine-year rule of the Congress-led UPA Government just 1.47 crore young people got employed. If the situation would continue further, youth of this country would not get place even on footpath,” he said.
Some people are using youth to gain power but I want to empower them with various skills, he said. Though Gujarat is a small State, it has allocated Rs 800 crore for skill development in order to tackle the issue of unemployment, while the Central Government has allocated hardly Rs 1,000 crore for entire country for the same purpose, he said. “This fact only exposed intention of the people at the helm.”
Taking a dig on the Union Government, Modi said that nearly 20,000 MW capacity power plants are short of fuel thanks to the rulers in Delhi, who are confused with lost ‘coal files’. Because of insufficient power generations, many States in the country are facing acute shortage of electricity, he said.
“In one State justice was delayed due to electricity crisis. The legal department officially gave reason that in absence of electricity, courts could function hardly three hours in a week. Can we should allow such people to decide our futureIJ” he asked the audience, majority of them were below the age of 25.