Expressing his confidence of retaining the Nagpur Lok Sabha seat by a bigger margin this time, BJP stalwart Union Minister for Transport, Shipping and Ganga Rejuvenation, Nitin Gadkari said on Monday the NDA this time will cross 300 mark in the Lok Sabha polls while the BJP-Shiv Sena combine will bag 38 to 40 out of 48 seats in Maharashtra.
Talking exclusively to The Live Nagpur with confidence of his own victory from Nagpur Lok Sabha, Gadkari said this time my margin of victory will increase from 1.5 lakhs to three lakhs. Gadkari was earlier being projected by a section of Sangh Parivar as the next Prime Minister replacing incumbent Narendra Modi. The senior minister in Modi cabinet is confident that BJP would get around 270 seats in the coming elections on its own.
Gadkari had surprised the seven-term MP, Vilas Muttemwar, of Congress who had won four terms from Nagpur in his political career when the BJP stalwart won the elections with huge margins in 2014. He trounced Muttemwar by a margin of 2,86,828 votes.
Gadkari represents Nagpur, which is the birth place of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the land where Dalit icon Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had embraced Buddhism on October 14, 1956.
Talking further to The Live Nagpur, Gadkari said the BJP-SS government has left no stone unturned in developing the second capital into a world class smart city. Nagpur and the region has been developed into Tiger Capital and a large number of tourists are being attracted boosting the tourism revenue. The setting up of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Law University and Indian Institute of Information
Technology (IIIT) are some of the other achievements, he said.
Gadkari said the Multi Modal International Passenger and Cargo Hub, popularly known as Mihan, has provided jobs to 25,000 youths and with big companies like Tech Mahindra, Infosys, and other IT companies are also providing jobs to educated youths.
Talking about his future projects, Gadkari said he would be interested in setting up bio aviation fuel hub in Nagpur and a massive world agriculture convention centre on the outskirts of Nagpur. More thrusts will be on
providing employment opportunities to youth in the second term of NDA.
We had already created several opportunities for youths by developing sea ports and water ways transports across the country Gadkari said. We have developed Paradeep, Goa, Mumbai, Haldia and other ports on water fronts and thereby provided direct and indirect employment opportunities to the unemployed youths locally, Gadkari revealed in the interview.
These ports are giving ample scope for tourism and since tourism is a big industry and requires man power, there will be no dearth of job opportunities in future.
Gadkari said his Shipping Ministry has earned a profit of Rs 7000 crores. He had so far spent Rs 17 lakh crores during his tenure on various developmental activities through his ministry. Similarly, Rs one lakh crore was spent on Ganga rejuvenation, Rs 11 lakh crores on roads by various central and state agencies and Rs five lakh crores by the Shipping Ministry, he informed.