Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said the Narendra Modi government is not taking decisions so that people like them, but for their welfare and without being influenced by vote bank politics.

Addressing an event to confer ‘The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards’, Shah said the works of any government, irrespective of the ideology, should be appreciated if those are for the benefits of people and their good.

“The Modi government is not taking decisions so that people like them. It is taking decisions that benefit people. We brought the GST and we knew that there were opposition to it. We brought the DBT (Direct Benefits Transfer) and it was opposed. On occasions, some decisions might have appeared harsh but all were for the good of people,” he said.

The home minister said that since independence, the country has seen 22 governments and 15 prime ministers and all of them tried their best for the development of the country with their abilities and available resources.

“Irrespective of ideology, we will have to acknowledge those who have done good work, took good decisions for the welfare of people,” he said.

Shah said journalists who are not objective and impartial can’t do good journalism.

“An activist can’t be a journalist and similarly a journalist can’t be an activist. Both may be good in their respective fields but can’t do good in both the work. But sometimes we can see such tendencies nowadays,” he said.

Paying glowing tributes to Indian Express founder Ram Nath Goenka, Shah said he had played a significant role while opposing the Emergency and giving the country’s first non-Congress government.

The home minister said the government should always have faith in people and people too should have trust in the government.

“The Modi government has never framed policies taking into consideration vote bank,” he said.

He said people-centric development should be the main mantra for good governance. “We have to make our own good governance model. It should touch everyone. It should reach the lowest level of society and cover every nook and corner of the country,” he said.

He said the government should be corruption free, efficient with policies, sensitive towards people, accountable and innovative so that it could solve the problems.

“The Modi government has never seen the problems in piecemeal but as a whole. Earlier the policies were not framed looking into the root causes of the problems. We have done that. The Modi government has changed both the scale and size of the policies,” he said.

Giving an example, the home minister said the government has decided to construct toilets in every home by 2024 and most of them have already been constructed. It has given 13 crore LPG connections, free houses to three crore people who have not owned a house for five generations while 50 crore people are being given healthcare facilities up to Rs 5 lakh free of cost, he said.

“There is not a single home or village which is now not connected with an electricity connection,” he said.

He said 130 crore people were given COVID-19 vaccines, which is a great achievement for a country like India.

“We worked together with all state governments irrespective the party. We had 30 meetings with chief ministers. Our priority was to save people’s life during the pandemic,” he said.

Shah said the government has also given free food grains to 80 crore people for two years. PTI ACB SKL TIR TIR

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