While inaugurating several public projects in the Lok Sabha constituencies of Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad East, and Ahmedabad West in Gujarat on Monday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah lambasted the Congress for “digging up holes” as he said the NDA will win the general elections this year. Shah claimed that there is no doubt the National Democratic Alliance will cross 400 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. “I was in Karnataka yesterday. In January, I went to 11 states of the country. In every state, there is no suspense over LS elections, the BJP will win 370 seats and the NDA will cross 400 seats,” said Shah. Inaugurating public projects worth Rs 891 crore in the three Lok Sabha constituencies and marking the groundbreaking ceremony of 26 other works worth Rs 1,059 crore, Shah hailed PM Modi’s inauguration of over 1 lakh houses under various housing schemes worth Rs 2,993 crore on Saturday. “When there was the Congress government, they would give 100 flats and would gather a crowd of 10,000. PM Narendra Modi gave 1 lakh houses and today the poor are living in those houses. Goals that others did not even consider or imagine have been completed by Narendrabhai in the past 10 years. Of these 10 years, 5 years were taken up in filling the holes that Congress had dug, five years it took to level it, and if you make him the PM for the third time, you’ll see speedy development.” Shah also hailed PM Modi for the consecration ceremony of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22. “For nearly 500 years, every citizen of this country was wondering when in Ayodhya the Ram Mandir will be made,” he said. Community health centre, housing projects Among the projects inaugurated on Monday was a newly constructed community health centre (CHC), approximately over an area of 3700 square metres at Thaltej, in a public-private partnership with real estate group A Shridhar Group and Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. The CHC, built at an estimated cost of Rs 10 crore, has facility of 30 indoor beds, two special rooms, speciality OPD services of physician, surgeon, paediatrician, and ENT, eyes and skin disease treatment, two major operation theatres, two minor operation theatres, a cerebral palsy unit, two labour tables. Diagnostic facilities for X-ray, sonography, and CT scan and a dialysis centre with five beds will soon start at the CHC. A dental unit in public-private partnership with Karnavati University too is available. Saying he has received interest from people who want to donate “MRI and eye machine”, Shah also appealed to Ahmedabad Mayor Pratibha Jain that once the machines are made available, requisite positions for staff and specialists should be declared “so that those in the west (part of Ahmedabad city) do not have to go till VS (Hospital) [a charitable hospital that has now been reduced to dilapidated condition], they can get free treatment near their homes”. Shah also inaugurated several housing projects including marking the allocation of 588 houses through a computerised draw of 1,400 houses under the in-situ slum redevelopment (ISSR) policy 2013 for Ramapir no Tekra slum inhabitants. At the inauguration ceremony, Shah said he used to visit this slum “as part of the BJP’s organisational activities on a cycle in 1983 and today my heart is gladdened in the way it has now been developed.” “A child growing in a slum and one growing in a good home, the change in that child’s development only their parents can understand,” said Shah. I K Patel, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, said while the entire redevelopment of the slum of Ramapir no Tekra is divided into six sectors, Monday’s allocation marked the phase-1 handover of Sector 5 of the slum. “This was the first phase of inauguration for sector 5. The 588 houses, completed at the cost of Rs 37 crore, were completed nearly five to six months ago. The work on the remaining houses (822) is ongoing and will be handed over as part of Phase -2 of block 5,” said Patel. The redeveloped slum housing project also includes an Anganwadi and primary health centre on its premises. Additionally, under the public housing redevelopment scheme of 2016 of the Gujarat government, 348 houses at Vijay Mill municipal quarters and 448 houses at Khokhra old slum quarters were allocated through a computerised draw. Another 7,886 EWS houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana were allocated across the city — in five projects in Nikol, four in Naroda and one in Vejalpur — through a computerised draw among 18,000 applications received from potential beneficiaries who wanted to avail of the scheme, said Patel.
