JOIN USModi govt prepares for first anniversary celebrations
Prime Minister Narendra Modi may choose to spend the anniversary of his government on May 26 in a village away from the national capital with sources in the government saying the day may be spent on mass public contact programme.
Modi, who held a meeting with a core group of ministers in his Cabinet on Wednesday after his return from a tour of China, Mongolia and South Korea, is understood to have discussed the ways in which the completion of one year of NDA government should be celebrated. The meeting was attended among others by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minster Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Sushma Swarah, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu.
According to sources, the government is planning to commemorate the completion of one year in a week-long ‘Jan Kalyan Parv’ celebrations starting May 26.
While the prime minister is expected to spend his day either at his constituency at Varanasi or at the birthplace of pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya at village Nagla Chandrabhan in Mathura, his ministerial colleagues will go to various parts of the country, particularly to rural areas, to tell people about the welfare measures taken for underprivileged sections and farmers.
Besides, the Jan Dhan Yojana, which connects every household with a bank account, the government has initiated various social sector programmes for poor in the past 12 months. Important among these are Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana and Atal Pension Yojana that are expected to take off from June 1. Modi maintains that his government has done much more in the first year of power compared to the work done by the previous two Congress regimes. The BJP has also lauded Modi for direct attack on poverty through rapid economic growth and governance through cooperative federalism. A dynamic foreign policy carried out by his government has also come for adulation by his critics. The anniversary celebrations will also be used to shed Modi’s pro-corporate image. The BJP has already announced a three-month Jan Sampark Karyakram or mass contact programme, to take forward its membership drive, which was first launched in November last year.