Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asserted that his government had worked hard to bring the northeast into the national mainstream and accused the opposition of “neglecting” the region and being “credit hungry”.
At a series of functions here, Modi claimed that in the last nine years since his government came to power, the definition of connectivity had been changed bringing the northeast nearer to the rest of the country.
In what many analysts saw as an energetic early start to next year’s general elections, the prime minister made attacking speeches and attended programs and cultural galas, where among other things he inaugurated a slew of medical, railway and other infrastructure projects, besides speaking at the platinum jubilee celebrations of Gauhati High Court here.
Modi accompanied by his trusted pointsman for the northeast Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, also witnessed a mega-Bihu dance performance where more than 11,000 dancers and drummers performed at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, which has made it to the Guinness World Records.
Lashing out at the opposition, Modi asserted early in the day, “We make our policies on the basis of countrymen first … (but) those who came before us were credit hungry and credit hungry people destroy the nation.”
He added, “We work with ‘Seva Bhaav’ (spirit of service) and ‘samarpan’ (dedication) for the people”.
The prime minister claimed that the Northeast had “suffered for decades under family-controlled politics, regionalism, corruption and insecurity” during which development was not possible and the region paid a “huge price” for this.
He also stressed that his government had worked hard to ensure dramatic improvement in social and physical infrastructure in the Northeast over the last 9 years.
“The Northeast was distant for earlier governments…we have served with dedication to bring it near,” the prime minister said.
“In the last nine years, we have changed the old definition of connectivity. It’s now four dimensional — physical, digital, social and cultural connectivity,” he said.
He said that in the past few years, youth from the region “have left violence and moved on the path to peace.”
“The atmosphere of mistrust is disappearing from the North East, the distance between hearts is disappearing … We need to move further closer,” Modi added.
Besides dedicating Northeast’s first AIIMS at Guwahati, the prime minister also virtually inaugurated three medical colleges at Nalbari, Nagaon and Kokrajhar.
The 500-bed tertiary care teaching hospitals with 24 undergraduate departments in the three medical colleges will start with 100 annual MBBS student intake, taking the total MBBS student intake to 1500 in Assam.
He also laid the foundation of the Rs 546 crore Assam Advanced Healthcare Innovation Institute (AAHII), a joint initiative of the state government and IIT Guwahati.
AAHII aims to promote inventions and innovations in medicine and healthcare, nurturing multidisciplinary research and development in frontier areas of medicine by marrying engineering with healthcare.
The prime minister also launched the distribution of 1.1 crore Ayushman cards to beneficiaries who will be able to avail cashless healthcare medical treatment benefits up to Rs five lakh with these cards.
Later in the day, while speaking at the concluding ceremony of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of Gauhati High Court here, Modi emphasised that technology needs to be brought into play to speed up the justice delivery system, especially in remote areas such as in the northeast.
“Technology can help bring justice to remote areas such as in the northeast,” he said.
He maintained that there is “unlimited scope for use of technology” to modernise the justice delivery system in the country.
