Modi befooling people: Sachin Pilot
February 22 2016, 17.01 PM IST || Pocket News Alert
New Delhi: Union Minister of State for Power and Coal Piyush Goyal while speaking at “Budget Aaj Tak” conclave here on Monday said the Narendra Modi led NDA Government has fast-tracked electrification of all households in the country and his government would achieve the target of 100 per cent electrification by 2019. He also said the government was proactively taking steps to contain prices of all essential commodities so that common people are not burdened by price rise.
“When we came to power there were 30 crore people who had no access to electricity…We have brought this down to 22 crore. As on April 1, 2015, 18,452 villages had to power poles, but in last 10 months we have electrified 5,537 villages, while power poles have come up in 1361 villages that will get power soon and work on erecting poles in going on in 961 villages. By March 2019, all villages will have power. Active cooperation by state governments is making this happen,” he said.
Asked about the NDA government failure in containing prices of essential commodities, particularly pulses, Mr. Goyal said it was wrong to say that his government did not work on it. “Prices went up because we had three consecutive failed Monsoon…But we imported pulses and brought its prices under control.”
On falling crude prices, he said the government has passed on some benefit of it to consumers. “But in a transparent manner we have been putting all extra revenue generated from it on maor development projects,” he pointed out.
However, senior Congress leader and party’s Rajasthan unit chief Sachin Pilot charged the Narendra Modi government with befooling people by making lives more difficult for them as prices of essential commodities have gone up and living has been made more difficult. “Mr. Modi promised of ‘acchhe din’ (good days) but people of all segments of society are in duress. The government has also failed to pass on the benefit of falling crude oil prices to the common man, which is very unfortunate. Similarly, the economy is also in a mess, be it the situation of banks’ growing NPAs or employment generation,” he said.
Mr. Pilot said despite having comfortable majority, the Modi government has failed to take bold reforms measures it had promised in general elections. He rubbished charges of any wrongdoings of previous Congress-led UPA government and challenged the NDA government to launch a probe. Instead of focusing on development issues, the BJP was trying to divide nation and society by raising issue of love jihad and Ram Mandir, he alleged.
