One of the speeches of Modi on Saturday

Ahmedabad, 8 December 2012

His voice was not excellent today, but his energy and spirits were the same. He started his week-end campaign from tribal Dang district in south Gujarat. Yes, the Dangs where Gujarat’s sole hill station Saputara is located. Dang contains almost 100% tribal population.

Addressing an audience in Dang Modi said, “Yesterday Soniaben said her party gave a tribal Chief Minister. But did this tribal Chief Minister ever pay a single visit to Dang? I have paid the maximum no. of visits to Dang as CM. During the girl child school enrollment drive I visited remote villages of Dang for three days. I visited rural schools. Forget the Chief Minister, who from the Congress party visited rural schools to ensure enrollments? Not even a Taluka panchayat or District panchayat member of the Congress.”

Modi said hill stations like Abu and Mahabaleshwar are located in other states, but have you ever heard Amitabh Bachchan coming on TV and inviting tourists to those places? But Amitabh Bachchan himself came to Dang and told the world: Gujarat ki aankh ka taara, Saputara.”

Modi said governments in the past didn’t worry about developing tourism here. In the recent tourist season, corn was sold for Rs 26, and even at this rate it was not available for tourists. Who earned due to tourism development? The local tribal.

Modi said that past Congress governments never thought beyond hand pumps, but this government worked for setting up as many as 5,000 mini group water supply schemes.

Modi didn’t miss a chance to attack Sonia Gandhi for her South Gujarat speech yesterday. He said this Soniaji and her party ruled Gujarat for 35 years with panchayats, civic bodies, state govt, central govt of her party, but drinking water connections in tribal areas were just 4%. It is this govt that lifted the figure to 76% through Van Bandhu Kalyan scheme. They couldn’t provide drinking water, forget irrigation water.

Modi corrected Sonia’s figures and said Van Bandhu scheme was not worth 11,000 crore but 15,000 crore and actual spending was Rs 18,000 crore, and this time the figure is further lifted to Rs 40,000 crore.

Modi laughed over Sonia’s remark on the condition of roads in Gujarat and said, “Sitting in an helicopter, Soniaben came to know that the roads are poor in Gujarat.”

Modi also talked about improvement in life in various areas under his administration including 108 ambulance and dairy industry. Modi also briefly gave an idea about government’s plan to develop Rama trail tourism attraction in the Dangs.

This particular rally of Mr. Modi in the farthest reaches of South Gujarat’s tribal belt attracted such a huge number of people that he invited photographers to come up to the stage to take photos of the crowds.