Prime Minister Narendra Modi virtually addresses the inauguration ceremony of new integrated terminal Building of Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, on July 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: PTI
On a day when the opposition is holding a meeting in Bengaluru to work out a united front against the BJP, and with the BJP-led NDA also scheduling a meeting of allies in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the opposition’s efforts as an attempt to ensure that democratic politics is to keep “their family first, and the nation as nothing.”
Prime Minister Modi was speaking, via video conference, at the launch of the new integrated terminal building of the Veer Savarkar Airport in Port Blair, a facility he said that will boost tourism and strengthen the economy of the archipelago.
“The credo of democratic politics is ‘for the people, by the people, of the people’ but these dynastic parties go by the mantra ‘of the family, by the family, for the family’ for them their family is first and the nation nothing. People are saying that this gathering is to promote corruption. It’s very obvious in the way that these parties can ignore whenever there are any acts of corruption, kidnapping or law and order breakdown. The moment any agency initiates action against corruption by any one of these parties, they all band together to allege victimisation, with no though give to the acts of commission. For example, The opposition parties have given a clean chit to the DMK despite corruption cases in Tamil Nadu. The Left and the Congress are also mum on panchayat poll violence in West Bengal, and left their own suffering cadre to die,” said Prime Minister Modi.
“Today the country has made up its mind to re-elect the NDA government in the 2024 polls. At this time, people who were responsible for the bad situation that the country found itself in have opened their ‘shop’. I am reminded of a poem when I see them, that they sing about one thing, the reality is another, the label for yet another thing and product has nothing to do with any of it. These people want to keep the democratic polity and constitution of the country chained. To them I want to say that for years the country was in the grip of hatred, scams, appeasement, black hearts and dynastic politics. Not anymore,” he said.
Mr. Modi claimed that tourist inflows to Andaman and Nicobar Islands have doubled since 2014 and will increase multiple times in the coming years due to the development of infrastructure in the archipelago. “We brought submarine optical cable fibre to the islands and built a medical college in Port Blair. Our government allotted ₹48,000 crore for the development of the archipelago in the last nine years. This is double of what was spent by the previous government,” he said.
“The tricolour was unfurled in Andaman and Nicobar Islands [in 1943] even before it was hoisted at Red Fort after India got Independence. But there were still signs of slavery. We removed those by renaming several islands to honour our freedom struggle,” he added.
