Government has saved Rs 49,500 crore from going to middlemen: PM Modi

He said there was leakage in various government schemes including the MGNREGA and PDS

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday said the government had taken several measures to plug leakages in government schemes and made an annual saving of Rs 49,500 crore which, he added, was earlier lining the pockets of middlemen.

Replying to a debate on the motion of thanks to the President's address in the Lok Sabha, Modi said there was leakage in various government schemes including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and Public Distribution System (PDS).

He said measures taken to plug the gaps were causing problems to "vested interests" and such people operated in almost every street of the country and siphoned off funds meant for the poor.

"The measures of the government have caused problems to big people. They will be after me, but I am prepared," Modi said.

He said 3.95 crore fake ration cards had been detected and leakages plugged to the tune of Rs 14,000 crore.

Modi said the government's moves towards promotion of LED bulbs, which consume less power compared to other bulbs, had brought down power bills and enabled savings of Rs 11,000 crore.

The Prime Minister said that payments under the MGNREGS through direct benefit transfer in the accounts had plugged leakage of Rs 7,633 crore.

"In a year, we have been able to save Rs 49,500 crore going to middlemen," Modi said, adding that the money belonged to the poor.

UP Elections 2017 : UP polls 2017 : Dialogue, drama, desperation as action begins

UP polls 2017: Survey shows BJP leads, but 40% voters still undecided

Overall, 28% of those surveyed said they would vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party

UP Elections 2017 : Election for the Uttar Pradesh state assembly, India’s largest state with more voters–138 million–than the population of the north American country of Mexico, start on February 11, 2017, but 40% of its voters said they still don’t know which political party they will vote for, according to a new survey conducted by by Fourth Lion Technologies, a data analytics and public opinion polling firm, for IndiaSpend.

The firm conducted 2,513 telephone interviews in Hindi of registered voters in Uttar Pradesh, and said their sample is representative of UP’s urban and rural voters as well as socioeconomic, age, gender and caste make-up. The survey was conducted between January 24 and January 31, 2017.

The first article on the survey analysed issues that voters said were important to them.

Overall, 28% of those surveyed said they would vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party that heads the central government, if the polls were held immediately, while 18% of those surveyed would vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP) that currently leads the state, 4% would vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh between 2007 and 2012, while 1% would vote for the Indian National Congress (INC).

The FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey asked voters about the the four parties that won the most seats in the last state and parliamentary elections. The survey did not measure how many seats a party would win, and only suggests popular support for different political parties. It cannot be interpreted as indicative of election results. Read more