Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said from being the hotbed of mafia and goonda raj under the previous dispensation, Uttar Pradesh, thanks to the development initiatives of the state government, ” is becoming a great example of the double engine government’s double benefit.”

Modi, who was in Aligarh to lay the foundation stone of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh University and visited the exhibition models of Aligarh node of Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor, said, “There was a time when the administration here was run by goons and mafia arbitrarily. But now the extortionists and those running the mafia raj are behind bars.”

The Prime Minister dwelt on the situation in Uttar Pradesh before 2017. He said the people of UP cannot forget the kind of scams that used to happen and how the governance was handed over to the corrupt. Today, The Prime Minister said,  “Yogi ji’s government is sincerely engaged in the development of UP.”

Modi recalled his late party colleague Kalyan Singh and said he would have been ‘very happy’ to see the emerging profile of Aligarh in the defence sector and establishment of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh State University.

Paying rich tribute to Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh,  Modi said his life “teaches us the indomitable will and a willingness to go to any extent to fulfill our dreams. Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh ji wanted the independence of India and he devoted every moment of his life to this.”

The Prime Minister said the university named after the freedom fighter would not only become a big centre of higher education but also emerge as a centre of modern defence studies, defence manufacturing-related technology and manpower development. “The new National Education Policy’s features of skills and education in the local language would benefit this university a great deal,” he added.

Narendra Modi India is moving out of the image of a big defence importer of the world to its new identity of an important defence exporter. He pointed out that UP is becoming a huge centre of this transformation. He said that one and half dozen defence manufacturing companies would create thousands of jobs with hundreds of crores of rupees investment.

“New industries are coming up to support the manufacture of small arms, armaments, drones and aerospace-related products in the Aligarh Node of the Defence Corridor. This will give new identities to Aligarh and nearby areas,” the Prime Minister added.