Know your PM Candidate : Mr. Nitin Gadkari

Name : Nitin Jairam Gadkari
State : Nagpur, Maharashtra
Also famously known as : Flyovers man, Road lover, Go Getter, Roadkari, Portkari
Followers : Seculars, Bhakts
Opposers : Pappus

Accomplishments :

Mr. Gadkari is currently the Central minister for road transport and highways, shipping and water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation, a man who has been enjoying a sudden and mysterious rise in political stature. For many years, Mr. Gadkari has been a builder who claimed moral reasons to perform his art—the public good. He was popular in Nagpur, but beyond that, he was never a mass leader who could influence elections.

He got into Politics when he was in his teens and worked for the BJP's Yuva Morcha. During his early years in Politics he focussed mostly on Nagpur and Maharashtra before rising into the higher ranks and eventually becoming the BJP's national president.

During 1995-1999, as PWD minister, Mr. Gadkari is remembered as the "flyover man" who constructed about 55 flyovers, including the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. He also promoted the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model, wherein private outfits received concessions to construct roads; this move boosted private investments.

Mr. Gadkari's main achievement is hastening road construction.

Sample these figures: When Gadkari took over, construction rate stood at 11.5km/day, which rose to 22.5km/day in 2016-17. By introducing new rules, Gadkari addressed the issue of reduced private investments. He eased the exit policy for developers facilitating their investments in new projects. A PPP type, hybrid annuity model, was introduced wherein Centre bore 40% project cost.

As transport minister, Mr. Gadkari secured approval for the centrally-funded Bharatmala project. Bharatmala involves over 84,000km of road construction over five years costing Rs. 7L cr. It will increase national corridors from 6 to 50, double freight on national highways and connect 200 more districts with highways.

Apart from this, in 2016-17, Mr. Gadkari awarded work for a record 16,800 km of highways.

Mr. Gadkari has consistently received compliments from across party lines. Congress' KC Venugopal praised Gadkari for being a "sincere" minister, trying hard to address challenges in the road transport sector. BJD's Tathagata Satpathy and TMC's Dinesh Trivedi also commended Gadkari's impressive performance.

Mr. Gadkari is one of the most performing ministers in the Modi cabinet who has an excellent track record on delivering on promises. He is also one of the no-nonsense task masters who will simply throw hard statistics at you in speeches or interviews to make any claims. The claims needless to say show hard results on the ground which is what is expected from a Transport minister - work on the ground rather than on paper.

He has an excellent track-record as Union Minister. He is cultured and has an affable and cheerful personality. He may not be as charismatic or possessing same compelling charm as Modi ; nor be an orator in the same class. But he earns a high grade in both. All these add-up to a healthy high- calibre as a potential PM. Mr. Gadkari prefers to keep a low-profile professionally. Further, he tends to follow moderate/liberal politics, which is quite a change from the ideological rigidity that is often seen in RSS/ABVP leaders. Apart from this, Mr. Gadkari expects his ministry to work like an MNC. He famously calls himself a 'go getter'.

Failures :

Mr. Gadkari is known to have been involved in corruption. Gadkari's Purti group has investments from companies that do not seem to exist as addresses given to the Registrar of Companies turned out to be fake.

Mr. Gadkari is among the senior politician of BJP who has contacts with builders and industrialist. He was handling roads and transport ministry from atalji era till today, point is he has contacts with lots of big people, there is no way he can be caught and even if he is, his experience/contact will help him to find a way out of it. After all it is history of Indian politics.

There were allegations of irrigation scam against him but not sure how much of it was true.

The cleaning of Ganga and its rejuvination is still moving at a snails pace. One might argue that it was under Uma Bharti before and Mr. Gadkari has just taken over the portfolio. He has set an aggressive deadline of 2020 but I am not sure if it would be achieved.

I could only find some failures or allegations against him but feel free to post your comments if I might have missed any.

Overall I would rate Mr. Gadkari a high performer and someone who has constantly delivered results and his promises. He doesn't hesitate to criticize even his own party members and is quiet vocal about social issues. He's the man who will be a credible alternative to Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate should the BJP fall short of numbers and need to desperately rebuild the NDA in its bid to retain power.

I've tried to keep this post as unbiased as possible but feel free to post your comments and add your inputs. As always I would once again like to say that I do not belong to any political party or endorse one. I am not paid by any political party's IT cell and these are just my views. A common man expressing his common views.

As I end this fourth post, I would like to remind people that your vote counts and your vote matters. When you head out to vote, please vote for the right candidate, please vote for a candidate with a clean image, please vote for someone who talks development and can do development. Voting based on Emotions, Religion, Region, Caste and language isn't going to yield anything. Don't fall into their false propaganda, false gifts and false promises because if you do and these people happen to win then you will lose. Don't vote for a candidate who belongs to your favourite PM candidate's party just because you want that person to be the PM. If the person from other party is good and can bring about a change then vote for that person since a PM is not going to come to you and solve your local issues.

If you think none of the candidates in your area are good then press NOTA (None of the Above). Development should be the sole goal when we head out to vote.

Let's believe in our constitution and believe that we can bring about a change.

Please exercise your right to vote.

Fifth post on Mr. Akhilesh Yadav. (Yes, he also wants to become the PM much like his father ;) ) Coming soon..

Jai Hind _/\_

#KnowYourPMCandidate #YourVoteCounts #GeneralElections2019