Frequent elections are not good for the country, said Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on May 30, adding efforts will be made to adopt the "one nation, one election" plan in the next five years.
The union minister said that both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are of the opinion that Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections should be held simultaneously.
“In five years, we will try our best to make provisions for one nation, one election,” Singh said, while rallying for Vijay Kumar Dubey, BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh.
Heaping praises on PM Modi, he said, “When India speaks today, the world listens," adding that even politicians in Pakistan are praising India, but those in the Congress and Samajwadi Party (SP) do not understand this. They (SP and Congress) are opposing Modi.”
The BJP leader also pointed out that India has become the fifth-largest economy in the world and credited Modi for it. "By 2027, India will become the third-largest economy. I have no doubt that India will become a developed country by 2047, but if our government continues like this, India will become the largest economy in the world by 2070," he said.
Lashing out at the Congress and Rahul Gandhi, the defence minister said, “Rahul Gandhi himself says he has seen the system very closely. He says the system that was there was anti-backward, anti-poor. He is talking about the governments of his great grandfather, grandmother and father, and saying the system during their times was anti-backward and anti-poor.”
“If he himself is saying all these things, it means he is accepting that his government was against Dalits, the poor and backward classes. Tell me, have you seen such a leader anywhere? He is a strange leader.”
He then went on to talk about the saffron party’s brand of politics and said the BJP does not indulge in "Hindu-Muslim politics". "We consider everyone a citizen of India. Be it Hindu, Muslim, Christian.... We never discriminate and neither does our prime minister. Our party's ideology is also not like this," Singh said.
Notably, Kushinagar is going to polls in the seventh and final phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha election on June 1.
(With PTI inputs)
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