‘After all, Bareilly is my constituency’

Most of my development projects are centred around Bareilly but what else do you expect me to do? It is my constituency, people elect me fro...

Most of my development projects are centred around Bareilly but what else do you expect me to do? It is my constituency, people elect me from there. But to say that all my effort has been for Bareilly would be wrong. When I first became minister, I distributed LPG connections under the discretionary quota to people of other states as well. States like Bihar, east Uttar Pradesh.

Also, to say that my projects are centred around the beautification of parks is wrong. The project that IOC is funding at Richaula Tarachand village is not beautification but is meant to provide civic amenities to worshippers of a certain sect who come there for a holy dip. I told IOC that they would earn a lot of public goodwill from the project, that publicity will remain forever.

I don’t generally seek funding from oil companies even though they have large funds earmarked for community development programmes. The only other time I sought funding from them was for an NGO called Matra-chaya in Mathura, Rs 10-15 lakh for a mobile ambulance in Mathura. And since I look after the Northeast refineries in Assam, I got mobile vans donated to NGOs which work in faraway villages. I have also urged GAIL to include Bareilly in the city gas project after Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi. IOC’s funding of Rs 48 lakh is very small compared to the funds that I have spent out of the MPLAD scheme or elsewhere.

That apart, I got Rs four crore sanctioned from K C Pant (the head of the Planning Commission) for Bareilly by-pass and Rs 1.5 crore for Bareilly-Badaun road from Surface Transport Ministry when Rajnath Singh was its minister. I am now embarking on a project which is oil-sector related, but I am not taking the help of the oil firms.

In Odisha, Modi mounts ‘loot tantra-vs-bachat utsav’ attack on Congress over GST

India10 hr ago

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday hailed the revised Goods and Services Tax (GST) structures, saying the era of “double bachat (saving) and double kamai (income)” has arrived under the Bharatiya Janata Party rule. Addressing the ' Namo Yuva Samabesh' in Jharsuguda, Modi accused the Congress of indulging in “loot tantra (tactics)” while in power.

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