Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hinted that he was ready for a third term in office and that he will not rest until “100 per cent” coverage of government schemes was achieved in the country.
“Once I met a leader…he is a very senior leader…he has been a political opponent, but I do respect him. One day, he came to meet me, to sort out some issues. He said, ‘Modiji, now what else do you want to do? The country has made you prime minister twice’,” the Prime Minister said on May 12 speaking virtually at Utkarsh Samaroh in Gujarat’s Bharuch, where beneficiaries of four Central Government schemes were assembled, according to a report in Indian Express.
Recalling an opposition leader's observation that becoming PM twice was enough accomplishment. PM Modi said that, “he does not know that this Modi is made of something else.”
“…it is the soil of Gujarat that has shaped him. It is not enough that I should rest now, that everything that has happened is good…No…My dream is saturation…meet your target 100 per cent. Get the government machinery into a habit, create faith in the citizens,” the PM said.
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Modi said in 2014 when he was elected prime minister for the first time, almost half the country was 100 miles away from toilets, vaccination, electricity, bank accounts, in a way they were denied.
“In all these years with all our efforts many schemes have achieved 100 percent saturation,” he said, adding that these were difficult tasks and politicians were afraid to touch them.
“ But I was not here to do politics, but to serve citizens of the country,” the PM said
The PM did not name any leader in his address but the observations come a month after NCP chief Sharad Pawar met him in Delhi and raised the issue of the central agencies' action against Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut and the family members of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
“The country has vowed to reach the target of 100 per cent. When this happens, the citizen begins to believe that I have a right to this money, and this sows a seed of duty. And when this saturation happens, there is no possibility of discrimination, there is no need for recommendation. When this happens, the politics of appeasement ends,” the PM said.
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On October 7, 2021, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) marked 20 years since PM Modi took public office as the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001. Since then the PM has been winning elections consecutively and has been chief minister of Gujarat three times before becoming the Prime Minister in 2014 and 2019.
(With PTI inputs)
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