Gandhinagar
“Injustices” to Gujarat by Congress governments at the Centre and the “real constructive development” brought about by BJP governments in the state remained the focal points of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s addresses on the first day of his two-day visit to his poll-bound home state of Gujarat today.

In meeting after meeting, Modi ridiculed the previous Congress governments’ “very narrow vision of development” to claim that the present generation of youths would not even be able to imagine the “horrible state Gujarat was in before the BJP came to power in the state”.

Modi, who began his Gujarat visit with prayers at the famous Dwarkadhish temple in Dwarka, claimed that in their “very narrow vision”, the Congress governments considered inauguration of a water tank or even laying a hand pump as development.

“Compare that with what we are doing — an airport in a small town like Chotila, cable bridge connecting Dwarka with Beyt-Dwarka, piped Narmada water to every household in villages. This is the real concrete development,” Modi said. Modi, who landed at the Jamnagar airport in the morning, laid the foundation stone of the Rs 982-crore bridge to connect Okha to Beyt-Dwarka.

He later laid the foundation stone of the Rs 2,500-crore green field airport at Hirasar village between the temple town of Chotila and Rajkot, initiated work for the six-laning of the Ahmedabad-Rajkot national highway and four-laning of Rajkot-Morbi highway.

He also dedicated a fully-automatic processing and milk packaging unit in Surendranagar, drinking water pipeline project for Joravarnagar and later in the evening, dedicated to the nation the newly-constructed building of IIT, Gandhinagar, and launched the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Sakhsarata Abhiyan.