GUWAHATI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday accused the Congress of standing with Pakistan and alleged that the party encouraged illegal immigrants and encroachment of land by them.
Modi laid the foundation stones and inaugurated health, connectivity and energy projects worth ₹18,530 cr and addressed two events in Mangaldai and Numaligarh in Assam.
With assembly polls slated in the state early next year, Modi accused the Congress of neglecting the state’s development and heroes like Lachit Barphukan and Bhupen Hazarika, and assured that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s “double engine” governments at Centre and in Assam are correcting those mistakes.
“The Congress stands with all such individuals and ideologies which are anti-India. When that party was in power, it used to remain quiet when terror acts bled the country,” Modi said at the first public meeting in Mangaldai. “Now when our armed forces conducted Operation Sindoor, the Congress instead of supporting our army stood with Pakistan’s forces. The party made that country’s lies part of its agenda. That’s why you have to be careful of Congress,” he added.
Recollecting Mangaldai’s association with the Assam Agitation (1979-85) against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Modi blamed the Congress for failing to listen to the indigenous people while allowing immigrants to enter the country and encroach on lands belonging to locals and religious places.
{{/usCountry}}Recollecting Mangaldai’s association with the Assam Agitation (1979-85) against illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Modi blamed the Congress for failing to listen to the indigenous people while allowing immigrants to enter the country and encroach on lands belonging to locals and religious places.
{{/usCountry}}“After the BJP/NDA government came to power, we are taking action against those encroachers and the state government here has started a campaign to free those lands. We won’t allow illegal infiltration and attempts to change demographic balance in border areas to happen,” Modi said.
Indirectly targeting the Gandhi family, which is often accused by the BJP of running the Congress with a remote control by propping up a leader, Modi said that 1.4 billion people of the country were his remote control and he doesn’t have any other such device controlling him.
Modi accused Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge of questioning Centre’s decision to confer the Bharat Ratna to Bhupen Hazarika in January 2019. In an interview with a news agency, Kharge, who was the leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha at that time, had termed the move to give the honour to the iconic singer, composer, song writer and filmmaker from Assam as a very sad development.
Modi reminded the gathering about the remarks made by former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru during the 1962 war with China when forces of the northern neighbour were advancing towards Assam.
“The wound caused by those words among the people of northeast at that time haven’t fully healed yet. And the present Congress leadership still continues to spray salt on that wound,” Modi said. “I can tolerate any number of insults hurled at me...But when someone else is abused unashamedly, I can’t tolerate it. You tell me, was it wrong to confer the Bharat Ratna on Bhupen Hazarika? Wasn’t it wrong for the Congress to question our decision?,” he said. The PM targeted the Congress on similar lines at the second public meeting in Numaligarh as well.
At the two events, the PM inaugurated and laid foundation stones in Assam of several major infrastructure and industrial projects worth over ₹18,530 cr. The largesse from the Centre comes ahead of assembly polls in the state, which is expected in April-May next year and the BJP, which is at the helm now, is hoping for a third consecutive win.
At Mangaldai in Darrang district, Modi laid the foundation stones for the 118.5-km-long Guwahati ring road project, a 2.9-km-long bridge over Brahmaputraconnecting Kuruwa (Darrang) with Narengi (Guwahati) and a 430-bedded medical college and hospital with a general nursing and midwifery (GNM) school and nursing college in Darrang.
Later in Numaligarh in Golaghat district, Modi inaugurated the world’s first 2nd generation bio-ethanol plant using bamboo feedstock and laid the foundation stone of a polypropylene plant, which will be able to produce 360 (KTPA) of the thermoplastic polymer, once completed.
“In Darrang, I laid foundation stones of projects related to connectivity and health and here I had the opportunity to inaugurate and lay foundation stones of projects on energy security. These efforts will strengthen efforts to develop Assam,” Modi said in Numaligarh.
Modi said that since India is developing at a rapid pace, its energy needs for electricity, gas and fuels are increasing and leading to dependency on other countries to fulfill them, which in turn is resulting in huge sums of foreign exchange.
“Our money is used to create jobs in other countries and increase their foreign exchange earnings. There was a need to change this situation. That’s why India has embarked on becoming self-reliant on our energy needs. On one front we are searching for natural gas and oil deposits and we are also increasing our capabilities in green energy,” he said.
The PM said that focus would also be on the National Deepwater Exploration Mission to find gas and oil deposits in the seas surrounding India.
“Assam, which has large deposits of natural oil and gas and where a semiconductor plant is also coming up, will play a big role in India’s development,” Modi said.