Kathua, Apr 17: Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for Udhampur-Doda-Kathua Lok Sabha constituency on Wednesday said Jammu and Kashmir is experiencing rapid development and it will continue despite opposition “propaganda”.
Speaking at a roadshow in Kathua on the final day of campaigning for the first phase of the Parliamentary election, Dr Jitendra launched a scathing attack on the Congress and its allied opposition parties. He accused the grand old party of neglecting the region for over six decades and deliberately stalling development projects to appease certain voter demographics.
“Congress Party deprived this entire region of any development for the last over 60 years and in fact deliberately also halted the ongoing project only to appease their masters and to keep particular sections of vote bank in good humour by doing discrimination with this region,” he said. “The irony is that the Congress leaders who say that there is no development happening in this region are the ones who are using these facilities created by us in the last 10 years, whether it is the network of roads, or bridges or flyovers or tunnels or the medical colleges and initiatives such as the Shahpur-Kandi Project, which were stalled during the previous regime.”
Slamming opposition leaders, the Union Minister called out their “hypocrisy” for utilising the infrastructure they criticise, such as the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Tunnel, during their election campaigns. He urged them to refrain from using facilities provided by Prime Minister Modi if they genuinely believe there has been no progress.
“The doublespeak of opposition leaders has become so evident that even family members of these Congress leaders now have decided to vote for Modi because the benefits of toilets and gas cylinders have reached even their households and changed the destiny of their women folk,” he said.
Similarly, the minister said, the children of the Congress leaders are using all the benefits of the StartUp and Digital India initiatives introduced by Prime Minister Modi and therefore, they will also cast their secret vote for Modi.
Dr Jitendra said the constituency has witnessed the transformation in the last decade, with the establishment of multiple educational institutions and the implementation of welfare schemes benefiting even the households of opposition leaders.
Appealing to voters to cast their vote 100%, Dr Singh said, “We have no opponent and our competition is with ourselves. We have to prove before ourselves that we have put up a better performance than in 2019 when we registered a record margin in J&K by more than 3,58,000 votes.”
“It is a foregone conclusion that Narendra Modi will be sworn in as Prime Minister for the third term in June 2024 with 400 plus mandate, but we have to prove to ourselves and others that this Udhampur-Kathua-Doda constituency also made a substantial contribution in making up the figure of 400 plus,” he said.
