Days before B R Ambedkar Jayanti on April 14, when the Union government will launch a three-week Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday sensitised his council of ministers and party MPs to aggressively reach out to the rural and Dalit population and highlight welfare schemes of the government. The Prime Minister, who addressed the MPs via teleconference and ministers at an evening meeting, asked every MP to provide 100 free LPG connections on Ujjwala Panchayat Day on April 20, sources said. The government has already announced the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan to reach out to poor households from April 14 to May 5. The campaign is to “promote social harmony, reach out to poor households, feedback on programmes and enroll in new initiatives” according to the official notes. During the 45-minute teleconference, which began with a tribute to social reformer Jyotiba Phule on his birth anniversary, Modi repeated that MPs should spend at least two nights in Dalit-dominated villages. “The focus of his address was that as public representatives, we must go to people to see that the programmes have had the desired impact on the ground. He also advised us to give importance to improve the delivery system. It was a message for social and developmental outreach,” a BJP MP said. The MPs said that Modi was “acerbic” in his attack on Opposition parties for stalling Parliament. “He said that those who lost power in 2014 are still playing politics of arrogance and hunger for power. He said all these (disruptions in Parliament) were being done to hurt the interests of the poor and stall development works,” the MP said. The MP quoted the Prime Minister as saying that the Opposition did not let a single business be transacted in the House. To protest against the washout of the budget session, the Prime Minister and BJP leaders will observe a day-long fast Thursday. Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu will participate in the fast in Delhi. Many other ministers will observe the fast in various parts of the country. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be in Chennai, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar in Benguluru, MoS for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel in Tamil Nadu, MoS for External Affairs M J Akbar in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh and Tourism Minister K J Alphons in Kerala. Health Minister J P Nadda will be in Modi’s constituency Varanasi, while Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will be in Patna, sources said. All party MPs will observe a fast in their respective constituencies. BJP chief Amit Shah will hold a sit-in at Hubli in Karnataka the same day. For the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, the government has deputed 968 officials across 484 districts to act as “nodal officers for coordinating the efforts of the Centre and the states in achieving 100 per cent saturation coverage under select government flagship programmes”. States like Karnataka, which goes to polls on May 12, West Bengal where panchayat elections will be held next month, Delhi and Goa were excluded.
