UPA 'failed' to generate employment, skilled manpower: Modi

The Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, on Wednesday targetted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and accused his government of laxity towards implementing employment and skilled manpower schemes.

Modi also stressed on the need for proper execution of schemes, if the country wanted to compete with China.

"He (Dr. Manmohan Singh at an earlier meeting of the National Development Council) said that our focus area is skill development and later he said that we would target 500 such projects to achieve the goal. When it was my turn to speak I said, dear Prime minister what are you saying, China is talking of 50,000 and you are talking of 500 only," Modi said, speaking at the inauguration session of National Skill Development Conference here.

Modi also alleged that the UPA-led Centre feigned working towards generating skilled manpower, and said that in reality the ruling Congress has failed to take any concrete action.

"In 2008, the National Council of Skill Development was created. Committee was made and people thought some sort of work will be done, but nothing happened. Then they (government) thought of creating a national skill development board but then this too failed. Everything thing in on paper and money was also used for these projects," Modi said.

Modi also said that if the Central Government had taken initiatives to generate skilled manpower generation, then his home state-Gujarat-would have happily followed their example.

He added, on the contrary, that Gujarat went ahead to set an example of generating employment that was later adopted by the government for the rest of the country.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was announced as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections earlier this month.