Cong spearheaded propaganda against BJP in Assam: Jitendra Singh

Union minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday said a lot of misgivings and doubts have been spread by the Congress to ''poison'' the minds of the people of Assam and the entire northeastern region against the BJP, but these were countered well by the saffron party.

He said seven years ago, the Congress had spread the propaganda that if the BJP comes to power in any of the northeastern states, it will start interfering with people's food habits and lifestyle, but ''we have painstakingly intermingled with the people and identified with them to convince them that BJP was an organisation which treated all sections of society equally, without any bias or discrimination''.

''Even recently, a notion had been spread by Congress party about the imagined hardships and sufferings that people would have to face if Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA was brought in. But in the last two years, the people realised that this was all propaganda against the BJP government and nothing of that sort happened,'' the minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office said.

On the contrary, he said, during the COVID pandemic, the BJP government and the BJP karyakartas worked in close coordination with each other and today the successful COVID management in Assam is being cited as an example in other parts of the country. ''We have worked day and night over the last seven years to win people's trust and to clear all the doubts and misgivings about us. Congress spearheaded propaganda against BJP but we countered it and people believed in our commitment towards their welfare,'' Singh told PTI.

He said, even before 2016, when ''we did not have a BJP government in the state, our karyakartas would come forward to offer their services at the time of flood or any other calamity faced by the people''.

Singh said, in the last seven years, ''we have successfully put Assam on the development track''. ''We ask for another five years so that we can complete the projects undertaken and implement the projects that have been planned for the welfare of people, particularly for youth and women,'' Singh, who is the BJP's co-incharge for Assam, said. Voting for the first phase of polls in 47 of the total 126 seats in Assam was held on Saturday, while 39 and 40 constituencies will go to polls on April 1 and April 6 respectively.

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