In reality, 2019 election is a battle of credibility: Gadkari

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday asserted that the 2019 election is a battle of credibility between the government and the opposition.

Addressing a press conference here, Gadkari lamented the fact that rather than the election being fought on development, the narrative is being driven in a negative direction by the Opposition.

"This election should ideally have been about our work done in the past five years and this is what we have focused on. But Congress party has engaged in a vitriolic campaign against our Prime Minister by employing low-level language in the run up to the elections of 2019. They have used 56 abusive words/phrases for our Prime Minister," said Gadkari.

"If one recalls, in 1971 when we had a war against Pakistan on the Bangladesh matter, the opposition under the leadership of Atal Ji stood along with the government. But during this election, the narrative of the opposition has truly declined," he added.

Gadkari further said, "This country is however home to a mature set of people. Congress speaks of NYAY (Nyoontam Aay Yojana). But talk of such schemes demands a certain level of political credibility, which Congress entirely lacks. Right from the time of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi, Congress has been making tall claims on removing poverty, but they have not been able to do so."

"On the other hand, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, we have facts and figures to sustain our claim of creating a better environment for the poor. We opened bank accounts for 34 crore people, up from earlier 3.5 crores and deposited Rs 70,000 crores in those accounts. We disbursed gas cylinders to 7 crore people under Ujjwala yojana. Under PMAY, around 1.5 crore people have got homes. National Highways are now built at the rate of 32 km/day, up from 2 km/day during UPA time," Gadkari affirmed.

"We created waterways in Ganga and have achieved a lot on cleaning Ganga. We have reached 30 per cent results on this front and by March 2020 we will achieve 100 per cent cleanliness for the holy river," he added.

The Union Minister expressed confidence in the people of the country and said, "People have a lot of faith on the credibility of our government and I am sure the opposition would learn from them that the narrative about the Prime Minister should be kept at a certain level. We have faith in our people that they would bring back the Modi government with a landslide majority this time."

Five phases of the election are now over in the country with two phases remaining on May 12 and 19. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.