Union Minister and senior BJP leader Dr Jitendra Singh on Saturday said that earlier governments and elected representatives from far-flung areas like Nagrota in Jammu and Kashmir had not only deliberately neglected the region but had also consciously practiced discrimination as part of an appeasement policy to keep a certain vote bank in good humour.
He said that it was only after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014 that the decades of discrimination ended, and the region began receiving its due and legitimate share.
Addressing a massive by-election rally at Nagrota in support of BJP candidate Devyani Rana, Dr Jitendra Singh noted that it was only in the last eleven or twelve years that even a backward area like Nagrota had become a part of India’s mainstream and witnessed rapid transformation with the establishment of high-profile institutions such as IIT and IIM, one after another.
Dr Singh said that connectivity and delivery of basic services had significantly improved, bringing Jammu and Kashmir at par with the rest of India.
He mentioned that the Delhi–Amritsar–Katra Expressway corridor, passing through Nagrota, was nearing completion and would reduce travel time to Delhi to nearly six hours.
The Modi government, he said, had sought to change the political culture by reaching out to those who needed support the most, without any consideration of vote-bank politics.
He cited schemes such as the PM Ujjwala Yojana, which provided LPG connections to needy women regardless of their political preferences, and the PM Awas Yojana, which offered housing to the homeless without any discrimination.