BJP fighting LS polls focussing ‘Modi Guarantee’: Union minister Pratima Bhoumik

Agartala: Union minister Pratima Bhoumik on Sunday asserted that BJP is fighting the Lok Sabha elections focussing ‘Modi Guarantee’ alone and said that her party has just shown a trailer of development and would provide the quantum leap in the coming days.

Bhoumik (Tripura West LS seat) who along with teacher-turned-politician Rebati Tripura (Tripura East LS seat) was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2019, said that 'Modi Ji’ is our only candidate in all parliamentary constituencies across the country and all the BJP candidates are contesting the elections only projecting the Prime Minister and his developmental mission, vision and success.

Both Bhoumik and Rebati Tripura have been dropped this time, as the party has fielded Kriti Singh Debbarma and former Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb from Tripura East and Tripura West seats, respectively.

The 55-year-old social worker-turned-politician Bhoumik also successfully contested from the Dhanpur constituency in the 2023 assembly polls but resigned later on the advice of the party and remained a Lok Sabha member.

While talking to the media on Sunday, Bhoumik said that the Modi government is working on ushering in next-generation technologies and capability enhancement in connectivity, communication, production along with encouraging entrepreneurship under startup initiatives, growing international relations and positioning India as a strong global power.

Claiming that Narendra Modi would remain Prime Minister for the next decades, she said that around 40 flagship schemes and projects are making the country a new India since the BJP-led NDA government came to power at the Centre in 2014.

Some of the schemes and projects she mentioned include, Ayushman Bharat, Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujjwala Yojana, Awas Yojana, PM Gati Shakti and projects related to road, railway, air, waterway connectivities, high-speed internet and digitisation of services, pro-people policies, focus on setting up IITs, AIIMS and other elite institutions.

Coming down heavily on the opposition CPI-M and Congress parties, the Union minister said that the two parties had been supporting each other before the Independence of India but actually did nothing for the growth of the nation and the welfare of Indians.

She said that Congress is diminishing due to communists and added that they (communists) destroyed our traditional culture.

“If the country ran with the ideologies of the communists, we would have been riding bullock carts. Modiji changed everything and took the country forward in all sectors.”

Recounting her experience as a Lok Sabha member for five years, she said that our leaders asked us to freely mix with the opposition MPs and to exchange thoughts and experiences.

She also said many opposition leaders and elected members are keen to join BJP but the party (BJP) is not accepting them at once.

Noting that India is fast progressing towards solving its unemployment issues, the Union minister said that an innovative plan has been undertaken to start manufacturing semiconductors, which is a necessity in all modern technological devices, in Gujarat and Assam.

Rubbishing opposition allegations on rising unemployment, she said that 1.25 lakh startups are now active in the country and added that even if a hundred people are employed at each of these startup ventures, it would mean huge employment opportunities.

In terms of educational institutions, India had 387 medical colleges till 2014 but the country now has over 700 such institutions, Bhoumik said, adding that Tripura got one of the highest benefits of the Centre's ‘Act East Policy’ among northeastern states.

Many campuses of national-level higher education institutions have been set up in Tripura and these include the National Law University campus, Sanskrit University, National Forensic Science University, IIIT, PM Shri School, and Vidyajyoti schools.

She also said that a host of India-Bangladesh connectivity projects like the Agartala-Akhaura (Bangladesh) railway projects and ‘Maitri Setu’, which connects India’s southern Tripura with Bangladesh, would be a huge game changer for the northeastern region.