By IANS
Ahmedabad : Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal Thursday said Gujarat lagged behind other states because the Narendra Modi government was keeping people under stress by constantly talking about terror threats.
Talking to reporters here, Jaiswal said: “Gujarat is behind Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in growth because of a deliberate government effort to keep them (people) under stress.
“If stress is out of their minds, Gujaratis have the ability to lead the country in the international sphere and their state in the national realm. People who want to keep Gujarat under stress and tension are not friends but enemies of the state.”
He said the state government was always referring to the 2002 Godhra violence and the “perceived terror threats” with the sole purpose of winning maximum votes by causing a communal divide.
Jaiswal claimed that the state government would have “resorted to inciting communal passions this time too” but the people of Gujarat had come in the way of such methods.
He added that the Modi government had failed to make optimum use of monetary benefits provided by the central government.
“During the last seven years, the central government has given Rs.2,500 crore (Rs.25 billion) for boosting the police department in Gujarat. But despite this, law and order has deteriorated in the state. I am told that as many as 36,000 posts at various levels are lying vacant in the state police.”
He accused the Gujarat government of favouring the rich and ignoring the poor and the lower end middle classes.
“The poor are largely being denied access to health and education facilities. If half the people are not getting these facilities, the state is not fulfilling its responsibility of being a welfare state,” he said.