Congress hoodwinked people by laying foundation stones: Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on the Congress party saying it has “hoodwinked” people by just laying foundation stones for projects and has done nothing for the poor.

Speaking at a function organised to start work on the ~431.3-billion Barmer oil refinery project here, Modi said drought and Congress walk hand-in-hand and the state saw end of drought when the party was shown the door.

Touching on the slugfest between ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress over credit for the refinery, he said the Congress had only laid foundation stones for projects across the country to claim credit.

Railway lines were announced just to claim short term popularity with projects never ever seeing the light, he said.

Congress, he said, had “hoodwinked” people by making just announcements.

Modi said the Congress had seen his commitment to one-rank-one-pension (OROP) scheme for defence personnel and provided for ~5 billion in the interim budget just before the 2014 general elections to claim credit. “Barmer refinery was at least on papers, OROP wasn't even on paper,” he said, adding no ground work on the beneficiaries or on the outgo was ever done.

It took one and half years to collate the list of beneficiaries of OROP and the implementation cost ~12,0 billions against ~5 billion provided by the Congress, he said.

Of this, four instalments totalling ~10,7 billion have already been made to defence personnel and the rest would also be paid soon, he said.

He said while the Congress just gave the slogan of ‘ garibi hatao’ (remove poverty), the BJP government has worked towards doing so by way of providing free cooking gas (LPG) connection to poor women and giving free power connection to the 40 million households that still do not have electricity.

Ahead of the event, ruling BJP and opposition Congress slugged it out to get credit for the refinery.