WITH HER BIRTHDAY BOY
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with mother Hiraba at the residence of his youngest brother in Gandhinagar on Saturday. After meeting his family in the morning, the PM spent his birthday with tribal people in Dahod district and later met the differently-abled at Navsari city in south Gujarat.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi got into poll mode on his 67th birthday and wooed the tribals of Gujarat while addressing two rallies in his home state on Saturday.
The PM began the day by seeking blessings of his mother Hiraba at the residence of his youngest brother, Pankaj Modi, in Gandhinagar.
Travelling in a small cavalcade of three vehicles, Modi, who arrived in Ahmedabad on Friday night, visited his mother at 7.15am — almost an hour earlier than his scheduled time. He spent around 40 minutes at ‘Saket’ in Raisan area of the state capital and met his other family members too. From there, the PM left for Raj Bhawan to meet Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, who is in Gujarat to attend a state-level judicial conference. This is the PM’s third visit to Gujarat in the past two months. The right-wing party is struggling to retain its key vote bank in the state due to the Patidar agitation and the protests held by Dalits following the Una flogging incident.
After meeting the CJI, Modi left for Limkheda village in Dahod tribal district to inaugurate irrigation and drinking water projects. The projects, worth nearly ` 3,800 crore, include six water supply and four lift irrigation projects.
“Due to scarcity of water, my tribal brothers had to migrate and toil hard as construction labourers in extreme heat in the past. At that time, the Gujarat government (under his leadership before 2014), gave priority to water and allocated highest budget for water related projects,” the PM said.
Before becoming PM in 2014, Modi had served as Gujarat CM for 13 years. “Today, we are inaugurating several projects for providing drinking and irrigation water at a cost of thousands of crores. We took up this task of empowering the last man on the line, so that he can also uplift the lives of others,” Modi said. He thanked the tribals for “raising” him and promised to do everything possible to uplift their lives through various schemes.
To avoid any untoward incident during the PM’s rallies, the Gujarat police in a preventive measure had detained 200 Patidars and also the Dalit unrest leader Jignesh Mevani.