New Delhi: Sounding the poll bugle for the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls later this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead the Union Council of Ministers to embark on a nationwide tour to reach out to the masses for highlighting the NDA government’s achievement on its fourth anniversary on May 26. Leading the charge, the Prime Minister is scheduled to establish contact with people and present his government’s four-year report card at Cuttack in Odisha on May 26 — the day he took oath four years ago.
The anniversary celebrations will have the tagline — Manzil Aa rahi hai paas, desh ka badhta jaata vishwas; Saaf niyat, sahi vikas (The destination is coming close as nation’s confidence grows; clean intent, right development). In its condensed form, the theme will be Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikas. The government will counter the Opposition’s charges with facts and figures on pro-poor initiatives taken in the last four years.
The Prime Minister’s Office is finalising a schedule for Union cabinet ministers who will spread the word regarding the people-centric policies of the government and its beneficial schemes through mass contact programmes. A contact programme has been planned with an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the crucial state Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh later this year. While earlier mass contact programmes for such anniversaries were held only for a fortnight, the fourth anniversary’s propaganda blitzkrieg is likely to extend over the next few months. The thrust will be on the Prime Minister’s main agenda of empowerment of the poor and rural India. BJP chief Amit Shah is also expected to make a pitch for the Modi government before the media on Friday.
The BJP’s members of Parliament will be deputed to visit their constituencies in the mass outreach programme and establish contact with their electorate. This newspaper was the first to report on April 11 that as promised ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will present a report card of his government’s achievements as part of its four-year celebrations. The PMO had asked all his ministers and ministries to present their respective achievements comparing these to the promises made by BJP in its 2014 Lok Sabha electoral manifesto.
Sources stated that a slew of brochures and pamphlets have been printed by the government which list and share the details of the public welfare schemes that have been initiated by various ministries of the Central government over the past four years.
The major issues for the party that are likely to get a performance appraisal are the status of Smart Cities and their development, Namami Gange which deals with cleaning of the river, employment generation in the country, how much Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been attracted during the Modi-government period, reduction in black money and the status of non performing assets. Other centre’s programmes selected for highlighting among the masses are road and highway construction, infrastructure development, the Mudra scheme, Ujjawala scheme for LPG connections, subsidy intervention for housing loans and others.
