Nitin Gadkari laid the foundation stone for a 47 km national road project in Amethi (File)
Amethy:
It was for the first time during the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee that the government began to think about and proactively implement basic social protection programs such as those for drinking water, health, education and roads, which have disappeared since independence, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Saturday.
The Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways made the remarks by laying the foundation stone for a 47 km national road project worth Rs 753 crore and dedicating four more projects to the people to Amethi on the occasion of the 96th anniversary of the birth of Prime Minister Vajpayee.
In a subtle dig at Congress and the Samajwadi Party, Mr. Gadkari said the BJP is not a “pariwarwadi“(dynastic) but a party of its workers and attributed its rise to the post of Union minister to the” fact “that the” BJP belongs to its workers “.
This is why, he declared, “I was able to occupy a chair next to the late Prime Minister Vajpayee” despite “not having an MP mother or an MP father” and despite being a simple party worker, doing the job of “painting the party” posters on the walls “and” campaigning for the party on speakers on rickshaws. “
Nitin Gadkari, whom Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya described as “the harbinger of the road revolution in the country” and whom his Cabinet colleague and MP for Amethi Smriti Irani described as Pradhan chief Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna, also explained how Atal Vajpayee tied him up in his village road building program.
The minister recalled that it was Atal Vajpayee who, after seeing his road construction works in Maharashtra, asked him to prepare a report to connect the villages of the country to the roads.
“I then prepared a project report on the subject and Atal Vajpayee started its implementation,” he said.
It is thanks to Atal Vajpayee’s vision that out of 6.5 lakh villages in India, more than five lakhs have been connected to the nearest towns today, Gadkari said.
Alleging a “dire” situation in the education and health sector during the pre-Vajpayee era, Nitin Gadkari said that in the field of education, either buildings, teachers or students were still missing and even when all three were there, “education itself was still missing. “.
“Likewise in the health sector, whether it was in the hospital or the doctors and nurses or the missing drugs, and even when all three were there, people did not trust them and did not trust them. were not going to seek treatment, “he said.
Addressing the rally, Smriti Irani recalled that in 2014, when Nitin Gadkari first visited Amethi, people had pleaded with him that now that there was the Narendra Modi government in the Center, he had to respond to their 30-year-old request for a bypass. road to the city.
And Nitin Gadkari had promised them that he would only visit Amethi with this gift, Ms Irani said, adding that it is not luck that Mr Autoroute.
Speaking about her work as MP for Amethi, Smriti Irani said she revealed for the first time that she was able to implement various development projects worth Rs 83,000 crore in Amethi during her short term as a Member of Parliament.
Speaking of a recent visit by Congress leaders Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi to Amethi, Irani said the brother-sister duo came here saying they would stay here for two days but would be back in two and a half hours. only.
.