Cuttack: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday virtually launched his party's campaign for the 2019 elections from the city with the slogan of building a new India based on the principle of " Saaf Niyat Sahi Vikas".
"The past four years of our rule has given people hope that the country can change, and there can be progress. Despair has given way to hope, and we are moving from chaos to order and black money ( kala dhan) is being replaced by people's money (jan dhan)," he said while addressing a rally at the Killa Maidan here to mark the fourth anniversary of his government.
Modi reeled off the achievements of his government in the past four years while launching an attack on the Congress for its family-centric politics without naming the Gandhis. "The one family that had ruled the country for 48 years before we came to power made us hang our heads in shame with scandals galore. Decisions were taken outside the cabinet and PMO and the country lost its international standing. Did (Mahatma) Gandhi, (Sardar) Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose and Chandra Shekhar Azad fight for this kind of a country?" he asked.
Asserting that the BJP-led NDA government was determined to take the country from " asampoornata" (incompleteness) to "sampoornata" (completeness), Modi said his government was guided by janmat (the will of the people) and not Janpath (where Sonia lives). Dubbing the Congress as the "family first" party, he said its long rule had pushed the country backwards in sharp contrast to the NDA's four-year rule.
"In the past four years, four crore villages have been given free power connections and 85 per cent villages have been connected with roads. We have also built 7.5 crore new toilets in this period and given LPG connections to more than 10 crore people," he said, adding that four crore women had received free gas connections under the Ujjwala scheme.
Modi said while according to a World Bank report only 53 per cent people in the country had bank accounts till 2014, the percentage of account holders crossed 80 now. "There are 32 crore accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana," he said.
Asserting that his government was not afraid of taking big decisions like "surgical strikes", he said it was because of this determination that it had been able to act against black money with around 3,000 raids across the country unearthing hidden money to the tune of Rs 53,000 crore. "Even four former chief ministers have been put behind the bars. Earlier, only small fish used to be caught," he said.
Modi said his drive against black money had caused consternation among his enemies and made them come on a common platform.
Modi wound up speech with slogans of Jai Jagannath and asking people to light up the screens of their mobile phones and hold them aloft. The ecstatic crowd obliged.
