Rajkot (Gujarat), Oct 11 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi while paying tributes to Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan on his birth anniversary on Tuesday here said that he was only following his footsteps and allowing agencies to catch the corrupt, but some parties were making a hue and cry over it.
The PM said JP Narayan had launched a movement to make the country corruption free.
He was addressing a public gathering in Jamkandorna of Gujarat's Rajkot district. He taunted the Congress party without taking its name, "Agencies are investigating corruption allegations of some political leaders and parties, instead of cooperating with the agencies, they are attempting to tarnish the image of agencies. Don't you think we should recover public money from such corrupt people."
Talking about the development of Gujarat in the last 20 years, he said, "There were only 26 engineering colleges in the state, today there are 130 engineering colleges, ITIs have increased from 300 to 600 in Gujarat, Pharmacy colleges from 13 to 75, there are 36 medical colleges with 8,000 seats, this is the development state has achieved."
Reminding about the poor water infrastructure the state had in previous regimes, Modi said, "You have not seen tears in your mothers' eyes, how difficult it was for them to fetch two pots of water, were dependent on water tankers or water supplied through trains. Now you are supplied potable water at your doorstep, because of BJP's visionary policy and planning of the SAUNI programme."
"Rajkot is a hub of engineering industries and diesel pump manufacturing sector," Modi said, adding that the Medium and Small Scale units are today manufacturing automobile spare parts, and he is hopeful that soon this industry will be manufacturing plane spare parts.
He alerted the party workers about the Congress' game plan to increase its base in the rural areas by playing caste cards to divide voters, and asked them to work hard in the rural areas to stop the division in the society.
The PM also paid tributes to Hindu ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh.