Union Minister Prakash Javadekar denied that the Modi magic was on the wane claiming that the BJP will return to power at the Centre even stronger after 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
“There is no question of the Modi magic fading. His magic persists and we will emerge even stronger at the Centre after 2019,” Javadekar said in an informal chat with reporters on completion of Modi government’s four years in office. Those who look upon Thursday’s bypoll results as an expression of public opinion on Narendra Modi government’s performance were wrong, he said. Dealing a body blow to the ruling BJP, opposition parties emerged victorious in 11 out of 14 bypolls while limiting the saffron party and its allies at just three and snatching the high-profile Kairana Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh with a united force. “Bypolls are different. Voter turnout is low and local factors are at work. Bypoll results cannot be a pointer to what is going to happen in the general elections,” he said. “Modi was not in the picture in the bypolls. He did not go anywhere. So it shouldn’t be perceived as a verdict on his government under whom the country is doing well on every front,” the minister said. “We are going to do even better in 2019 than we did in 2014 in a number of states such as Orissa, West Bengal, Kerala and the northeast,” he said. The minister also sought to shatter the perception that Modi and Amit Shah were the only people who mattered in the NDA and all ministries were answerable to them. “Their (Modi, Shah) vision may guide ministries but that is not to say they have no freedom to take their own decisions,” Javadekar said, adding some wrong perceptions have also been created. Patting BJP government’s back for providing clean governance, he said in the last four years of Modi rule there had not been a single corruption charge against any minister. “Not only that. We have also put in place a system under which corruption cannot grow by eliminating middlemen. Now 100 per cent of the money released by the Centre under welfare schemes reaches the beneficiaries,” he said, claiming elimination of middlemen as a major reformative step by the Modi government.
