The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief was addressing the valedictory session of a national seminar organised here to commemorate 60 years of Upadhyaya’s lectures on integral humanism.

Nadda, also a Union minister, said the government has provided cooking-gas connections to more than 10 crore households, constructed 12 crore toilets and built four crore pukka houses.

There is a need to understand how the government under Modi’s leadership has empowered women, farmers and the marginalised sections of the society, and brought them into the “mainstream”, he said.

“Who has really done good for the poor? People only raised slogans, but it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who provided free foodgrains to 80 crore people and lifted 25 crore people above the poverty line,” Nadda said.

“There were lots of discussions on farmers. Every politician started becoming a farmer leader. However, it was our Atal Bihar Vajpayee first (during his term as the prime minister) and then Prime Minister Narendra Modi who changed the destiny of farmers, taking inspiration from Deendayal Upadhyaya’s integral humanism,” he said, For farmers’ welfare, the Modi government has taken various measures and rolled out the Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, soil health card programme and crop insurance scheme, he added.

The BJP chief said under Modi’s leadership, India has become the fourth-largest economy in the world and is proceeding towards achieving self-reliance in various sectors, including defence.

“We witnessed the success of Operation Sindoor and that of the BrahMos (missiles) as well. Our defence production has reached Rs 1.3 crore (in terms of value),” he said. PTI PK RC