Lucknow, May 26 (IANS): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday kicked off a 'Maha Sampark Abhiyaan' - a contact programme aimed at telling the masses about the achievements of the NDA government at the centre in one year.

State party president Laxmikant Bajpayi launched the programme formally at Nagwa village in Ballia, the birth place of 1857 martyr Mangal Pandey.

Union Rural Development Minister Virendra Singh began the programme at Jhansi while Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharti kicked off the campaign in Meerut.

Launching the campaign, Bajpayi said the NDA government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was for the poor, downtrodden and the marginalised sections of society.

Claiming that it was for the first time that union ministers had gone to the door steps of farmers to assess the ground realities after unseasonal rain and hailstorm destroyed their crops, the senior BJP leader said it was the initiative of the Modi government that the crop damage assessment was done at 33 per cent rather than the earlier one of 50 per cent.

Uma Bharti in her address at Meerut said that the union government was moving ahead to fulfil its promises and that she was very hopeful that the cleaning of the Ganga river would be completed by the Modi government. Union Minister Virendra Singh in Jhansi said that the NDA government was committed to comprehensive development of the rural areas.

Union Minister of State for Railways Manoj Singh took part in an event to mark the launch of the campaign in Bareilly. Party spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said the campaign was aimed at taking to every person the achievements of the Narendra Modi government as well as further consolidate the goodwill and membership base of the party in the state.