Lok Sabha elections 2019: PM Narendra Modi urges Arunachal voters to vote for ‘double engine’ growth

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged voters in Arunachal Pradesh to vote for ‘double engine’ growth by electing Bharatiya Janata Party governments both at the Centre and in the state.

“By electing Pema Khandu’s government in Arunachal Pradesh and Modi’s in New Delhi you have to attach the ‘double engine’ of growth and take the state forward fast,” Modi said while addressing a public rally at Aalo.

Arunachal Pradesh will go to polls on April 11 to elect 60 members to the state assembly and two members of parliament from Arunachal West and Arunachal East constituencies.

“I have been trying to make the northeast New India’s new growth engine for the past five years and it is my good fortune that the start of giving a report of my work is commencing from Arunachal Pradesh,” Modi said.

The Prime Minister was canvassing for union minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju, who is the sitting MP from Arunachal West, and is contesting as the BJP candidate from the same seat again.

Three BJP candidates from assembly seats Yachuli, Dirang and Along East, all falling under Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat, have already won their elections unopposed.

Arunachal Pradesh is the only other state in the northeast apart from Assam from where the BJP had secured wins in the 2014 general election. The party had won 7 of 14 seats in Assam and one of two in Arunachal Pradesh.

In the 2014 assembly elections, Congress had secured majority. But in the past five years, most of the party’s MLAs quit first to join a regional party and later the BJP, giving the saffron party its first government in the region headed by Pema Khandu.

“Arunachal Pradesh has been lucky for us. The flowering of the Lotus in the northeast started from this state. I humbly accept your blessing for development’s ‘double engine’,” Modi said

Listing the several projects started in the state in the past five years, he accused the previous Congress governments of Arunachal Pradesh of indulging in corruption.

Modi remained silent on the recent riots in Itanagar over the state government’s proposal to grant permanent resident certificates to six communities, which claimed three lives. The proposal was later shelved.