BHOPAL: Six months ahead of the assembly elections in MP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday accused previous Congress governments of “step-motherly treatment to villages” and “breaking their trust”.He was in Rewa, 490km from Bhopal, to flag off three new trains and inaugurate five Nal Jal Schemes worth Rs 7,853 crore on Panchayati Raj Day. He also dedicated 4 lakh new PM Awas Yojana homes. MP governor Mangubhai Patel, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union minister for rural development and panchayati raj, Giriraj Singh, were present on the occasion.Addressing a large gathering, the PM said, “The people of Chhindwara on whom you (Congress and PCC chief Kamal Nath) depended for a long time, were oblivious of development.” Chhindwara is the turf of Congress stalwart and ex-CM Nath who represented the Lok Sabha constituency for nine terms.“The party that ran the government for the longest time, broke the trust of our villages,” he alleged.“Mahatma Gandhi used to say that the soul of India lives in villages, but Congress disregarded his ideology. In the 90s, they only did a formality in the name of panchayati raj. They divided people living in villages to run their business,” he added.Previous governments did a lot of injustice to rural areas, he said, alleging that they “destroyed the panchayati raj system”.“After 2014, the country took the responsibility for empowering panchayats. Before 2014, the finance commission’s allocation for panchayats was less than Rs 70,000 crore. After 2014, this allocation increased to more than Rs 2 lakh crore,” the Prime Minister added.
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