Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs and Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday asserted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's forecast of the BJP winning 370 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is a conservative estimate as nothing said by him is ever an exaggeration.
In an interview with PTI, Puri also said that the prime minister's statements on target dates for implementation of schemes are invariably a result of deep and thorough research and are based on inputs he gets from many people.
He then puts an overall political stamp on it, he minister said.
"In 2014, we had a miserable failure on the biofuel blending front and in previous 10 years, we were not able to achieve even 1.5 per cent biofuel blending in 10 of our states and union territories.
"When Prime Minister Narendra Modi came and said that we are going to change this. We can do 10 per cent blending by November 2022 and 20 per cent blending by 2030. We achieved the 10 per cent target five months before the time," he said.
Nothing the prime minister says is ever an exaggeration, the Union housing and Urban affairs minister said.
Earlier this month, Modi expressed confidence that the NDA will get more than 400 seats, with the BJP wining at least 370 seats in the Lok Sabha elections to be held in April-May.
The prime minister said he was convinced that the opposition parties have lost the courage to contest elections and resolved to stay on the opposition benches for a long time.
Opposition parties have formed the INDIA bloc to challenge the BJP in the general elections.
Hitting out at the AAP and the Congress, both constituents of INDIA bloc, the minister said that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, even combined votes of both parties were less than the votes of BJP candidates on all the seven seats.
Terming the coming together the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress an "alliance of conflict", the BJP leader said they will fight elections in Delhi together, but against each other in Punjab.
"What is the genesis or the birth point of the Aam Aadmi Party? To me, the AAP party grew out of the Anna Hazare movement. It was a movement specifically targeted at the corruption in the Congress party. Today, if you are a Congress worker, you would say they are more corrupt than us," he said.
The minister said people are benefiting from various schemes of the Modi government and the BJP will be getting a huge mandate in the upcoming elections.
He said that 11 crore toilets have been constructed by the Modi government, and four crore houses have also been sanctioned under both Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Rural) and PMAY (Urban).
"Currently, there are around 68 lakh beneficiaries of PM Street Vendors AtmaNirbhar Nidhi. During the Covid pandemic, their livelihood was affected badly, but the Modi government helped them by launching this scheme," he said.
Loans worth Rs 11,000 crore have been disbursed so far under the scheme, the minister said.