Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday used the reference of Madhya Pradesh ex-chief minister Kamal Nath's home town Chhindwara to attack the Congress party for “discriminating” against villages and “depriving them of development” during its decades of its rule.
Addressing the National Panchayati Raj Day event in Rewa, Modi said, “I often think that those people from Chhindwara on whom you reposed faith for a long time, why did they remain apathetic to your development, the development of this region? The answer lies in the mindset of some political parties. The political party that ruled for the longest time after independence was the one that broke the trust of our villages. During its rule, Congress put the villages on the lowest priority and did not pay attention to the people, schools, roads, power supply, storage facilities and economy in the villages. With half of the country's population living in them, the country cannot progress if such discriminatory attitude is adopted against villages,” the PM said.
This is election year in Madhya Pradesh and Nath, who is leading the Congress charge as the party’s state chief, has been the target of local BJP leaders including chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for the past several days and has faced sustained personal attacks.
Modi’s indirect reference to Nath while attacking the Congress shows the BJP strategy of cornering the ex-CM in the election run-up.
This was the fifth visit of PM Modi to poll-bound Madhya Pradesh in the past seven months. The national level event was organised at Rewa – the headquarters of the politically important Vindhya region of the state. Sources said that the BJP is worried at reported weak feedback from the region that gave the party 24 out of 30 seats in 2018 polls.
The performance of the party was not so good in the civic bodies’ polls last year as it had three major mayoral posts in the region – that in Katni and Rewa to Congress and Singrauli to AAP. Also, the announcement of party MLA Narayan Tripathi to float a separate party and contest seats in the region on the agenda of separate Vindhya state, has been causing worry to the state BJP. Sources said that the Panchayati Raj day event was earlier planned at Bhopal but shifted to Rewa in view of the situation.
Congress leaders, including ex-ministers Kamleshwar Patel and P.C. Sharma, and spokespersons countered the Chhindwara reference, listing out the many developmental works carried out in the district. In a press conference, Sharma and media department chief K.K. Mishra listed that the entire Chhindwara district was electrified as early as 2006, the district has 4060 kms of road network including 57 km of ring road, it has many national and state level educational and skill development institutes, industries, big nationalized and private bank branches, model railway stations and so on.
On the PM’s claims of panchayati raj development, the Congress leaders asked why only 19.39 per cent of Rs 21,800 lakh central share of panchayati raj schemes were spent in MP in 2022-23.
‘Political parties benefited by dividing people in villages’
While highlighting the various steps taken by the BJP government after 2014 to ensure development of rural populace and villages – like the PM Housing, nal-jal
(tap water), irrigation, jan-dhan (zero-balance bank accounts) schemes – the PM said that earlier governments did gross injustice to villages. “They would refrain from spending on villages as villages are not vote-banks in themselves. Therefore they were neglected. Many political parties were running their shops (reaping benefits) by dividing the people in villages. BJP stopped this injustice and opened the coffers of the government for the development of the villages.”
Modi said that the BJP government increased the finance commission grants to panchayats from Rs 70,000 crores to over Rs 2 lakh crores post-2014. Similarly 30,000 panchayat office buildings were constructed compared to mere 6000 in Congress era. Optical fibres had reached 2 lakh villages compared to just 70, pre-2014.
He also said that after independence, governments destroyed the panchayati raj system that was flourishing in the villages of the country for many centuries. “They had no faith in this age-old system. Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi) said that India’s soul existed in villages, but Congress ignored even his words. They brought in the panchayati raj system in the 1990s as mere pretension, but did not pay the required attention to the villages.”
Earlier, PM Modi participated in the virtual ‘griha pravesh’ (entering new home) of 4.11 lakh beneficiaries of the PM Housing scheme. He also dedicated and laid foundation stones of four major water supply schemes costing Rs 7,853 crores under Jal Jeevan Mission and rail projects worth more than Rs 2,300 crores. He also handed over property ownership (swamitva) cards to 35 lakh beneficiaries virtually.
Governor of Madhya Pradesh Mangubhai Patel, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Giriraj Singh and other union ministers Faggan Singh Kulaste, Kapil Moreshwar Patil, Prahlad Singh Patel, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti and state ministers were present.
Give proof of doubling of income: Nath to Chouhan
Congress leaders, led by Kamal Nath came down heavily on CM Chouhan’s claim during the Rewa event that farmers’ income had more than doubled in the state. Chouhan had said “PM had given the mantra of doubling farmers' income. You too know and I will also tell you that in Rewa district itself, wheat production has gone up 4.5 times, paddy 5.5 times and mustard production has increased 35 times. The world should see that what the PM had said has been fulfilled in Madhya Pradesh and farmers’ income has more than doubled in MP.”
Kamal Nath retorted on Twitter: “Chief Minister Shivraj ji, today in the presence of the Prime Minister, you announced in Rewa that the income of farmers in Madhya Pradesh has more than doubled. During your current tenure in the state assembly, the MLAs have asked many times questions regarding the doubling of farmers' income, but your government did not answer to even a single question. Rather, on March 22, 2022, the Standing Committee on Agriculture presented its report in parliament that the monthly income of the farmers of Madhya Pradesh has decreased from Rs.9740 to Rs.8339. I would like to know from you which report and which study is the basis for your claim that farmers' income has been more than doubled. Please make that report public. If the farmers of Madhya Pradesh accept that report as true, I will congratulate you myself. The real truth is that you have made more than 34 lakh farmers of Madhya Pradesh defaulters. By stopping the loan waiver, you have tortured the farmers. You have stopped the minimum support price bonus. Till date, you have not given compensation to the farmers affected by hailstorm and excessive rain. There has been no chief minister more anti-farmer than you in the history of Madhya Pradesh.”