New Delhi: In a bid to take the Gandhi clan head on, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency Amethi on February 27. The visit comes at a time when the Congress has given charge of eastern UP to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is holding meetings with the party’s leaders in the region. Mr Modi, who on Tuesday visited his constituency Varanasi, is likely to visit the ordnance factory in Munshiganj and also address a public meeting in Amethi next week. He may also inaugurate a number of projects and lay several foundation stones for projects in Mr Gandhi’s home turf. On Tuesday, he paid homage to Varanasi’s Ramesh Yadav, one of the soldiers killed in the recent attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama.
In Varanasi, Mr Modi yet again played the dalit card and invoked Sant Ravidas, a mystic poet of the Bhakti movement on his birth anniversary, urging people to end caste discrimination and identify those who promote it for “self-interest”. With the crucial Lok Sabha polls just around the corner, the PM addressed two meetings and launched development projects worth '3,000 crores, including a cancer institute, a sewage
treatment plant, a drinking water project, and a light-and-sound show at Sarnath. It was Mr Modi’s second visit in a month to his Lok Sabha constituency.
Taking an apparent dig at Mr Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav for “mocking” the high-speed Vande Bharat Express from Varanasi to Delhi after it developed a snag, the PM said the duo insulted the engineers involved in the project. He was at the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi, where he flagged off the first electric locomotive converted from a diesel engine in the country.
Laying the foundation stone of the Ravidas Janmasthali area development project, Mr Modi said that caste discrimination was an impediment in achieving social harmony. “Guruji said there should be no discrimination on the basis of caste. Till caste discrimination is there, people cannot connect with each other, social harmony is not possible and equality cannot be ensured,” Mr Modi said, and urged the gathering to identify those who in “their self-interest, create caste discrimination and promote it”. Mr Modi said Sant Ravidas dreamt of a society where all are taken care of and asserted that his government had tried to follow his tenet during the past four and a half years with “sabka saath, sabka vikas” (inclusive development).
“My government focused on ‘panchdharma’ — education, income, medicine, irrigation and addressing public grievances — irrespective of caste, creed and other factors,” he said. He added that unfortunately, caste discrimination had not been removed till now, but said he was confident that ‘New India’ will see this change with the help of young people.
Referring to attempts by his government to fight money power and corruption in property deals, Mr Modi said: “A ‘chalta hai’ mentality had crept in. My government has tried to change it.” He added that those who looted public money were being brought to book and honest people were being honoured. Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, who was present there, called Mr Modi a “Kashiputra”, or a son of Varanasi.
