PM Narendra Modi inaugurates seven AIIMS (Image credit X @narendramodi)
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, February 26: The Election Commission is widely being expected to announce the dates for the Lok Sabha elections in the first 10 days of the next month. Signs of poll date unveiling could be seen from Prime Minister Narendra Modi going on a spree to either inaugurate or lay foundation stones of projects all across the country.
The scale of the projects for which Modi is laying foundation stones is evidently expanding. The prime minister will lay foundation stones of railway station redevelopment projects worth Rs 41000 crores on Monday. He will be laying foundation stones through video conference. As many as 2,000 railway projects have been bundled for the virtual ceremony.
Modi was in Gujarat yesterday. The prime minister had either inaugurated or laid foundation stones for projects worth Rs 48,000 crores at the Rajkot function in Gujarat in one go. This also involved unveiling of five AIIMS across the country.
In his address at a public meeting in Rajkot, Modi said: “Even though only seven AIIMS were commissioned during the seven decades of independence, some of them couldn’t be completed. In the last 10 days, the nation has witnessed the foundation stone laying and inauguration of seven new AIIMS.”
Modi didn’t give details of incomplete AIIMS. But the AIIMS in Delhi still boasts of the patients spilling over to the main road while facilities are evidently strained with the people from several states rushing there for treatments. An AIIMS in Rae Bareli, former parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi, ex-Congress president, was also inaugurated
The officials in the government are busy speculating on the possible poll dates. The prime minister is likely to touch bases with most of the states with his project inauguration spree before the model code of conduct comes in force. They claim that the last event in the foundation laying spree would be grand. Modi’s days with inauguration and laying foundation stone ceremonies are meant to add strength to the poll plank of the Bharatiya Janata Party around ‘Vikasit Bharat (Developed India)’. Notably, the Modi government claims that India will be a developed country by 2047.
The Prime Minister’s Office yesterday issued 14 media statements. Six of them dealt with the participation of the prime minister in the project inauguration or foundation laying events. Two concerned him attending functions of religious groups. Another three were about his visits to temples in Gujarat.
Two days ago, the prime minister had laid foundation stones for projects worth Rs 13,000 crores in Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency. Political observers are now saying that “time has come to turn ears to the people”. They also caution that “making views by watching television may be harmful”.
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