Kalahandi, Odisha: Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Kalahandi in Odisha today for his Lok Sabha election campaign on Tuesday.

PM Narendra Modi addressing a rally at Kalahandi on Tuesday.

Addressing the public rally he said, “24 lakh houses in Odisha have got free electricity connection. After 70 years of independence, 3000 villages of Odisha got electricity for the first time. All of these things weren’t done by Modi, India’s voters are the ones who made it happen. Modi is only a servant, all the development work has happened only because of your one vote.”

Prime Minister Modi said, “Parties like Congress and BJD conspired to keep the poor of the country poorer. They deceived the poor. They treated them as vote-bank and because of this, people like Dana Manjhi do not even get an ambulance.”

Attacking the Congress, the Prime Minister claimed that the Congress looted the poor in the last 70 years for its own personal gains and did not care about the well-being of the poor.

“Do you have trust in those who have looted the poor? Seventy years have passed and these people have looted you. Will you forgive them? Such has been their intentions,” he said.

“If BJP had formed the government here (in 2014), the work in Odisha would have been much faster, better and at a bigger scale. Whatever could not be done in the last 70 years, the same could have been achieved in the last five years. Despite non-cooperation from the state government, we did our best to bring about the change in your lives,” he added.

“In the last two decades, the coal mafia chit fund scam took lace. Corruption has increased in the state due to these people. You trusted BJD for 19 years, time has come for a change,” Modi asserted.

The seven-phase Lok Sabha elections will begin from April 11 to May 19 and counting of votes will take place on May 23.

Odisha has 21 Lok Sabha and 147 Assembly seats and the state will witness simultaneous elections in the first four phases April 11, 18, 23 and 29. (ANI)

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