Odisha will be among country’s key growth engines for next 25 years: Modi

New Delhi: For the next 25 years, Odisha will be among the country’s key growth engines, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday at an NDA parliamentary party meeting in New Delhi.

“Whenever I think of Lord Jagannatha, I feel he is the God of poor,” PM Modi further said.

Chosen by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance as its leader to become prime minister for the third time, Modi also said the NDA government in the next 10 years will focus on good governance, development, quality of life and minimum interference in the lives of common citizens.

Modi further said that he would strive to ensure unanimity in all decisions of his next government and asserted that the NDA is an organic alliance committed to the principle of ‘nation first’.

He said mutual trust was at the core of this alliance and they were committed to the principle of ‘sarv pantha sambhava’ (all sects are equal).

“If we look at it in terms of numbers in the history of coalitions, this is the strongest coalition government,” Modi said, asserting the NDA knows it very well to digest victory.

“We have never lost. Our conduct following June 4 shows that we know how to digest victory,” the prime minister said, and attacked opposition parties.

“There were efforts to not acknowledge this very victory, to cast a ‘shadow of defeat’ on this victory. But all such efforts remained fruitless… Such things ‘die very young’, and it happened,” Modi said at the meeting of the NDA Parliamentary Party.

NDA leaders including N Chandrababu Naidu (TDP), Nitish Kumar (JDU), Eknath Shinde (Shiv Sena), Chirag Paswan (LJP-RV), HD Kumarswamy (JDS), Ajit Pawar (NCP), Anupriya Patel (Apna Dal-S), Pawan Kalyan (Jana Sena) attended the meeting along with newly elected Lok Sabha members from the ruling alliance.

Modi congratulated the victorious NDA leaders and said he must salute the lakhs of ground workers who worked to ensure this victory.

“This is the most successful alliance in the history of our country. It has completed three successful terms and is now entering its fourth.

“The NDA is not a grouping of parties that have come together to get power, it is committed to the principle of ‘nation first’,” he added.