NDA’s third anniversary bash to highlight its anti-graft initiatives

MINISTERS M VENKAIAH NAIDU AND PIYUSH GOYAL HAVE BEEN MADE INCHARGE OF COORDINATING WITH MINISTRIES FOR THE CELEBRATIONS

Riding on the popularity of the demonetisation drive that is believed to have paid electoral dividends in the just concluded assembly elections, the Narendra Modi government has decided to make anti-corruption initiatives “climaxing with note withdrawal” one of the key themes of its third anniversary celebrations on May 25.

The government will also showcase how it efficiently used resources by plugging leakages in social sector schemes, various infrastructure initiatives and economic improvement to mark the occasion, sources said.

For its first and second anniversaries, the NDA government had mainly harped on its social agenda, focusing on policies that made a difference to the people “belonging to different sections of society, including the deprived and the poor, farmers, women, children, youth and the common man.”

Urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu and power minister Piyush Goyal have been made in-charge of coordinating with different central ministries for the third year anniversary celebrations.

In a recent communiqué to all the central ministries, Goyal’s office has sought information on what kind of “anti-corruption architecture” each one of them had put in place since May 2014, climaxing with note withdrawal and outcomes of various governance reforms.

Each of the ministries has been asked to segregate the information state wise and also as per four target groups – youth, women, poor and farmers.

“Despite opposition backlash following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to demonetise ₹1000 and ₹500 currency last November, the government did not budge. It built a strong narrative on how the initiative will help fight corruption and black money.

The election results in UP and Uttarakhand showed that people supported the move,” said a senior government official who did not want to be quoted.