New Delhi: The Opposition is opportunistic and brought an element of suspicion about India’s Covid-19 vaccination by calling it “Modi ka vaccine”, “BJP ka vaccine”, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is toiling day and night to establish India internationally, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Sunday at the BJP National Executive meeting.
The party passed a resolution hitting out at its rivals and vowed to ensure victory in the upcoming round of assembly elections.
The National Executive is the key decision-making body of the BJP. Major political resolutions and election strategies are decided on at this meeting.
Sitharaman said a total of 18 issues were discussed as part of the resolution, including India’s Covid-19 vaccination achievement, climate change initiatives, the ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ scheme, and how India’s youth are now employment generators rather than job seekers.
The finance minister said India’s image was established through the vaccination programme, but slammed the Opposition for raising suspicions about it while remaining “confined to Twitter” and being “nowhere to be seen” when it came to helping people. She also said PM Modi enhanced India’s image in the climate change dialogue with his speeches at the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
“A total of 18 issues were highlighted including how India’s image abroad has been established through the way our vaccination programme has been run in the country. International institutions and leaders have looked at India’s methodical way of doing it. The methodical fashion in which the vaccination has been conducted has built India’s image abroad,” Sitharaman said.
She also pointed to the free food scheme the government had launched when India went into total lockdown due to the Covid pandemic last year.
“Within 48 hours of announcing the lockdown, we came up with giving people food for free for 8 full months — for 80 crore people,” the finance minister said.
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On farmers, J&K, Bengal
Sitharaman also said the BJP resolution highlights the work done for farmers, in the form of welfare schemes. She pointed out that the minimum support price has been increased 1.5 times, while farmers have been directly given Rs 1.53 lakh crore in nine instalments.
Asked if the farmers’ protest is a major challenge ahead of the assembly elections, with the Opposition raising issues too, Sitharaman said: “Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and every person in the government has made their position quite clear, which is that we are ready to talk. We have asked them what are the provisions they have a problem with. But till today, not a single point has come to us. Still, Tomar ji is ready to talk. The Opposition will try to make it into an issue.”
Speaking about Jammu and Kashmir, Sitharaman added: “We also discussed how after the abrogation of Article 370 in J&K, the DDC and BDC elections have shown how people are willing to come out to participate in democratic processes.”
She gave data to show the sharp decline in the number of civilians killed in terror attacks in J&K since the Modi government first came to power in 2014.
“Between 2004 and 2014, 2,081 people died in Jammu and Kashmir in terrorism-related incidents, while from 2014 to September 2021, only 239 civilians lost their lives. This proves that peace has now been established in Jammu and Kashmir,” said Sitharaman.
Political violence in West Bengal also figures in the BJP’s resolution. “The BJP strongly condemns the Bengal violence and we stand by every worker who has suffered. We will stand by them during all legal processes and will support every BJP worker in the party in Bengal,” Sitharaman said.
Nadda’s targets for party
Earlier in the day, BJP president J.P. Nadda set key targets to strengthen the party, and said its peak is yet to come.
Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told mediapersons that Nadda has fixed organisational targets, including setting up booth committees on all 10.4 lakh polling booths in India by 25 December 2021, to complete the appointment of panna pramukhs (people in-charge of each page of the electoral roll) by 6 April 2022, and institutionalise listening facilities at each booth by May 2022, so that people can tune into PM Modi’s monthly radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
“There is a state where the BJP roots have not deepened. There is a signal of changing politics in Telangana; it seems BJP has already come to power there,” said Pradhan, quoting Nadda’s inaugural address.
The minister added that Nadda lauded the vision of PM Modi, especially in combating the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Eighty crore citizens per month were given free rations in the Covid pandemic, which is more than the entire population of Europe. This showed the decisive capacity of the PM in taking the right decisions at the right time,” said Pradhan.
Pradhan also quoted Nadda as thanking the people of West Bengal despite the defeat to the Trinamool Congress earlier this year, as the BJP’s vote percentage rose to 38 per cent. He also said 53 BJP workers have been killed in West Bengal so far.
“In the 2016 assembly polls, BJP’s vote share was negligible, and now it’s 38 per cent. We have got the blessings of Bengal. In political history, such rapid growth in vote share has never been registered. The BJP chief assured people of West Bengal that party is with them,” Pradhan said.
According to sources, Nadda also spoke about the politics that the Opposition indulged in. “While people were playing politics with the issue of oxygen shortage initially, the prime minister ensured that the highest capacity of oxygen was made available in one week’s time to the country,” a source quoted Nadda as saying.
(Edited by Shreyas Sharma)
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