Opposition-ruled states denying people benefits of PM Modi's welfare schemes: Jitendra Singh

Kolkata, May 13 (PTI) Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Monday said the opposition-ruled states have been denying people the benefits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s welfare schemes, which would have helped in employment generation.

The most striking example of this is West Bengal, where many people have not even heard of some of the public welfare schemes of the central government, which have otherwise gained enormous popularity across the country, he said.

Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said the people of West Bengal have now begun to realise how the decades-long rule first by the CPI(M) and then by the TMC has "thrown the state several years back" and brought entire development to a virtual halt.

He said that once upon a time, the common adage was that "what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow", which means that the state was always ahead of the other states and regions of the country.

"But unfortunately, it is the other way now," the minister said.

Singh said the opposition parties keep criticising the Modi government for unemployment but on the contrary, the state governments run by these parties do not allow the Centre's initiatives, which would have led to generation of employment in large numbers.

"The opposition-ruled states have been denying people the benefit of Prime Minister Modi's welfare schemes," he told PTI.

Singh said that since most of the people-centric programmes like the 'Ujjawala' scheme to provide gas cylinders to the needy households, the 'Swatchhta Abhiyan' involving the construction of toilets for women or the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for construction of pucca houses for those who cannot afford it, have not been implemented on the ground in West Bengal.

This, he said, has happened because for most of the schemes, it is imperative to have the coordination and cooperation by the state administration down to the level of the district and block administrations.

"But here in West Bengal, instead of coming forth with such coordination and cooperation, the state administration is invariably instructed by the political establishment not to cooperate in achieving the targets of the central schemes initiated by the Modi government," Singh claimed.

"The people, therefore, now no longer want to live in deprivation and have made up their mind to turn the tables in the ongoing elections so that they too become the beneficiaries of PM Modi’s welfare schemes like in other parts of the country," the minister said. PTI AKV AKV MNK MNK