Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday said Union Home Minister Amit Shah was enough to handle the situation in violence-hit Manipur and there was no need for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the north-eastern state for that purpose.
His statement comes days after Shiv Sena (UBT) president and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray targeted PM Modi asking why he was undertaking a tour of the US instead of visiting Manipur to restore peace there.
Fadnavis once again credited PM Modi for taking the initiative in developing anti-coronavirus vaccines in India and said it was because of him all 140 crore citizens of the country were administered doses free of cost or else “crores of people would have died”.
Addressing a rally at Karad town in Maharashtra’s Satara district, Fadnavis said without naming Thackeray, “A few days back, a leader from Maharashtra said that PM Modi is visiting America but not Manipur. I would like to tell him that our Union Minister Amit Shah is enough to handle the situation in Manipur. There is no need for Modiji to go there.”
“You (Thackeray) did not even go from ‘Matoshree’ (his personal residence) to Worli (a nearby suburb in Mumbai), but you are telling Modiji to go to Manipur instead of America. Does he even have any right to speak on it?” the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader said.
Violent clashes broke out in Manipur after a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ was organised in the hill districts on May 3 to protest against the Meitei community’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. So far, nearly 120 people have lost their lives and over 3,000 were injured.
Union minister Shah has called an all-party meeting on the situation in Manipur on June 24. Fadnavis, in his speech made at Akola on Sunday, gave credit to PM Modi for the development of anti-coronavirus vaccines in India.
However, Thackeray later ridiculed Fadnavis and asked, “If Modi ji made the vaccine, what were the scientists doing? Were they (merely) plucking grass?” Referring to it, Fadnavis said, “Earlier, my speech was ridiculed by Thackeray when I had said that Modiji made the vaccine. When Uddhavji was the chief minister of Maharashtra, was he running the show like a person holding the reins of a horse?”
“Today, I am stressing on it and saying that the PM made the vaccines because only five countries in the world could manufacture the vaccine vials. A couple of countries had the raw material (for the vaccines) and they were not sharing it with others. It was Modiji’s relationship with these countries that helped us get the raw material,” he said.
He said the PM met scientists, gave Rs 1,800 crore in advance and got the anti-coronavirus vaccine vials produced, due to which all 140 crore citizens of the country got vaccinated for free.”Had Modiji not given the vaccine for free, what would have been our condition? We might have been standing like a beggar before the US or Russia requested vaccines. And had those countries prioritised vaccination of their own population over us, then crores of people here would have died,” Fadnavis said.
It would have led to piles of dead bodies here and we would not have been able to meet publicly even now, the former chief minister said.
“We have got a visionary prime minister, who not only ably tackled the COVID-19 pandemic, but also gave free food grains to the poor for two years,” he said, adding, “It is a world record in the name of Modiji.” Even the United Nations in its report stated that because of PM Modi’s free food grain distribution programme, our citizens did not face starvation the way people in some other countries had to, he claimed.
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