Around Rs 5.78 lakh crore given directly to people in last 4.5 years: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday claimed that the BJP-led central government has curbed the leakage of money in government policies and given around Rs 5.78 lakh crore directly to people via different schemes.

"One former Prime Minister of India said that only 15 per cent of Indian money reaches to people and rest is vanished. He said if one rupee is given by the central government, then people get only 15 paise out of it. The party, which ruled the nation for so many years, had accepted management they had given to the people. However, it's regretful that they didn't even make efforts to stop this leakage in their next 10-15 years of governance," Prime Minister Modi said at the Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas here.

"The country's middle class continued to pay taxes honestly, and the party which had been in power for so many years kept ignoring this 85 per cent loot. But, we have used technology to eliminate this 85 per cent loot by 100 per cent. In the past 4.5 years, our government has given around Rs. 5 lakh 78 thousand crore directly to people through different schemes. We have transferred it to their bank accounts. We have given this amount to people for home, studies, scholarship, gas cylinders and grains," he added, in a veiled reference to the remark made by former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1985.

Prime Minister Modi said the Congress-led government could have also evaded corruption, but they didn't have any intentions to do so.

"If the country would have been running in the same way like earlier, then even today, over Rs 4 lakh 50 thousand crore would have leaked out of this Rs 5 lakh 78 thousand crore. This work could have been done earlier, but there were no intentions," he said.

Highlighting his government's achievements, the Prime Minister said that in the last four-and-a-half years, the government has identified and removed around 7 crore fake people who "never took birth but were present on papers and taking benefits of government schemes."

This number is more than the population of Britain, France and Italy," he added.