Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday that the Mahagatbandhan or the grand alliance of political parties had no prime ministerial candidate to show. She was speaking at the Vijaya Sankalpa Samavesha organised by the BJP here.
Ms. Sitharaman said that in contrast, the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been tested during the last five years in the country. The last five years had seen development on all fronts. In contrast, the previous five years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government were marred by scams. Though the Congress was in power for most part of the seven decades after Independence, it had failed to eradicate poverty. “The only agenda of the Mahagatabandhan is ‘Modi hatao’,” she said.
Ms. Sitharaman said that after the Pulwama terrorist incident which resulted in the killing of 40 personnel of CRPF, the country waited for 12 days for Pakistan to take action as the latter portrayed itself as a victim of terrorism. But when no action was forthcoming, the country launched air strikes on the terrorist camps there. This was in contrast to the 26/11 terrorist strike by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai in 2008, when the UPA government took no action. Mr. Modi had given a free hand to the military to take action and he had shown zero tolerance to terrorism, she said.
Kota Srinivas Poojary, Leader of the Opposition in Legislative Council, Raghupati Bhat, Lalaji Mendon, Halady Srinivas Shetty, V. Sunil Kumar, B.M. Sukumar Shetty, Kiran Maheshwari, MLAs, and Ayanur Manjunath, MLC, were among those present. Later, Ms. Sitharaman accompanied Ms. Karandlaje, when the latter went to file her nomination papers at the Deputy Commissioner’s office here.