New Delhi: Speaking at the first BJP Parliamentary meeting held after the Budget announcement on 1 February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said: “The Budget is pro-people and for everyone, with something for all the 130-crore people of India. And even though it’s the last full-fledged budget before the 2024 (Lok Sabha) elections, no one is calling it a ‘chunavi’ (poll-influenced) budget. Even the opposition has praised it.”
He also asked party MPs to go talk to the poor and middle-class people in their respective constituencies “about what they got from the budget. “The pro-poor aspect of the budget should reach people through public meeting and interaction,” he said.
The Indian economy, added Modi, is being talked about positively across the world.
A BJP functionary present at the party’s parliamentary meeting told ThePrint that, “the PM’s thrust was on post-budget outreach and J.P. Nadda (BJP national president), too, spoke about making an effort to spread the word about budget.”
“We have constituted a team to spread the word about the best schemes of the budget and now Nadda has asked every state MP to contact their finance minister to check outlay for the state and publicise them at mandal level,” the functionary added.
Noting that there’s a view that youth in cities are not involved in sports much, the PM asked the MPs from relevant cities to organise sports meets. He also added that guests visiting India from other countries for various G20 meetings have appreciated the way the country has organised the events.
Since the announcement of the Budget, there has been no business in parliament because of the continued logjam over the Adani issue, but neither Modi nor Nadda brought up the issue at the party meeting. Party leaders have argued that once this discussion is taken up in parliament, the BJP will launch an attack on the opposition who, they say, are misleading the country on this issue and that regulators are doing their work and looking into the matter.
Modi, the functionary said, also told MPs that India has sent an expert rescue team to Turkey where over 4,400 people have died following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake Monday. He said the PM recalled the 2001 Bhuj earthquake, which hit while he was chief minister of Gujarat, and said he could understand the trauma, having lived through it himself. “The PM said that with the help of society, a new city was developed and now there is a need to reach out to those facing similar pain,” he said.
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