BJP ended credibility crisis in politics, says Rajnath Singh in attack on Congress

BHUBANESWAR: People lost their trust in politicians as the Congress did not fulfil promises made to people during elections but the credibility crisis in politics has been ended by the Bharatiya Janata Party, defence minister Rajnath Singh said on Thursday, launching a sharp attack on the Congress in his speeches during the day.

Singh, however, went easy on Odisha’s state government led by Naveen Patnaik, a gesture that came days after Patnaik’s party, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) helped Union railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw get re-elected from the Rajya Sabha this week.

“The BJP won the trust of the people by fulfilling all its promises. You can check our election manifesto and find that all the promises are met. No other government except the Modi government created schemes with the maximum beneficiaries in India. Modi has lifted 25 crore people from poverty after coming to power. The Centre has provided toilets for 11 crore people, and pucca houses for 4 crore people. This government ended the crisis of credibility in politics. People now have faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi. We (BJP) do politics to serve the people and build the nation and not just to rule the country,” Singh said at his meeting in Nabarangpur.

The top BJP leader also addressed party workers from the Lok Sabha constituencies of Berhampur and Mayurbhanj.

To be sure, Rajnath Singh, who is campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections expected to be held in April and May, did insist that a double-engine government – a term used by the BJP to advertise the benefits of having the same party in power in a state and at the Centre – would soon be formed in Odisha,

In May last year, Patnaik and Modi heaped praises on each other during the flagging off of the Puri-Howrah Vande Bharat Express train, a sharp contrast to the campaign in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when union home minister Amit Shah described Patnaik as a “burnt transformer”.

Earlier this month, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh described the BJD and BJP as two sides of the same coin and Rahul Gandhi accused the two parties of being in a partnership.

“Whenever I go to BJD to talk with their members, they say that they have instructions from Bhubaneswar to support Modi ji. In any discussion or during the passage of any bill, the BJD has never criticisied the Modi government. There is no difference between BJP and BJD as they are two sides of the same coin,” Ramesh said on February 7.