Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said that "no nation can develop with an army of illiterates" and it is the government's responsibility to educate them.
"I was trolled but I would like to say again that 'no nation can develop with the army of illiterates'. It is the governments' responsibility to educate them. Somebody who does not know his Constitutional rights cannot contribute to the nation, as much as it can be done," Mr Shah said while speaking at the inaugural session of the National Conference of 'Delivering Democracy'.
The Union Minister further dubbed the BJP's decision to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi the Chief Minister of Gujarat "rare" because he (PM Modi) had no real experience of running administrations in 2001.
"In 2001, the BJP decided that Narendra Modi will become the Chief Minister of Gujarat. It was a rare occasion - because he had no real experience of running administrations until then," he said.
"The state was reeling under a lot of pressure after facing the Kutch earthquake. He tried to change things and did a lot of work on development and transparency. When (PM) Modi ji became the Chief Minister of Gujarat, the state had 67 per cent enrolment and 37 per cent dropout. He started a 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao' programme to promote gender ratio and education. This eventually saw 100 per cent enrolment and he also took steps to ensure dropout ratio reduced to almost zero."
"After the 1960s and by 2014 people doubted if the multi-party democratic system can be successful... People wondered if the system failed as it didn't yield fruitful results. With great patience, they took a decision and gave power to PM Modi with an absolute majority," Mr Shah said.
He also slammed the previous Congress-led central governments and said that during their reign there was a "policy paralysis".
Speaking at the inaugural session of the National Conference of "Delivering Democracy", the Union Minister said, "What government did we have at the time of 2014 polls? We had a government where cabinet ministers did not consider PM, a PM; everybody considered themselves the PM."
"There was policy paralysis. Perhaps respect for India was at its lowest, corruption of Rs 12 lakh crore. There were questions on internal security. It seemed our democratic system would collapse at any time. At that time BJP decided to field then Gujarat chief minister as its PM candidate," he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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