‘We will ensure every poor person has a roof over his head’

The BJP-led Government at the Centre would ensure that in 2022 each and every poor person would have a house with toilet, power, water and their children would have a school to attend to close to their homes, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said on Wednesday.

He also slammed the situation of exporting iron ore and importing steel when the country was rich in natural resources and said “no country can think of this type of economic agenda”.

Speaking in English at an election meeting in Salem in support of the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) candidate LK Sudheesh for the Salem Lok Sabha constituency, he said the steel from Salem had been used for the construction of landmark buildings in countries such as Malaysia and Australia. The time had come to use the steel from Salem and the strength of its people to ‘build our great India’. He said Salem had all the power and talent but the problem lay in ‘Chennai and Delhi’. He said while the people were ready to work hard, those in power did not ‘give power to your units’, he said in an obvious reference to the acute power shortage.

Modi, terming the coming Lok Sabha polls as ‘different’, said the nation has ‘decided whom they want to trust’ and even before the polls they had decided to repose their faith on ‘someone who sells chai instead of someone who sells the nation’.

He said he would promise the country ‘a revolutionary approach to national development’ — ‘team India’ under which the Centre would work with the States and encourage the States to work with each other to take the nation forward.

Referring to the total sanitation campaign launched by former BJP Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to make the country free from open defecation, Modi said “we will deliver in 60 months what Congress had not been able to do in the last 60 years”.

He also touched upon important issues concerning the Salem region such as the plight of the silverware artisans and weavers and said BJP’s manifesto has promised to focus on the handicraft and handloom sectors.

Modi said unless the rivers were linked, States such as Tamil Nadu would never get water and it was a priority for the NDA that people of Tamil Nadu got water and power.