Patna, May 24: Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad today tried to salvage the image of the UPA-II government of the Centre here after it took a beating in Parliament and outside for several scams tumbling out of the closet.

Steadfast on his mission to highlight the achievements of the UPA-II, Azad said: “The Opposition has picked up a few cases of scam against certain individuals to sully the image of the Manmohan Singh government that has pumped in largest amount of money in the social and infrastructure sectors in the history of governance in India.”

Besides Azad, several other Union ministers have fanned out in different parts of the country to highlight the achievements of the UPA-II on its completion of third year in office.

“We are on the mission to apprise people of what the government has been doing for them amid vicious campaign to tarnish the UPA II’s image,” he said. Azad claimed that India was among the few countries registering a growth rate of seven per cent in the 2011-12 fiscal. “The country got foreign direct investment equity of US$8,000 crore — 55 per cent more than the same last fiscal.”

Azad did not launch a direct attack on chief minister Nitish Kumar but he reeled off the statistics suggesting that the state government had been sitting pretty on many works in social sectors being done by the Union government.