“No Posters Or Bribes, Vote For Me If You Want To”: Nitin Gadkari

Mr Gadkari was speaking during the inauguration of a road in Maharashtra.

Mumbai:

In a sign of his confidence in the work he has done, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said he has decided not to put up any posters or banners for the Lok Sabha elections next year, nor will he offer any inducements to voters. “I have served you. Vote for me if you like, don’t if you do not want to,” Mr Gadkari told a public gathering in Maharashtra. 

Speaking during the inauguration of a road in Washim on Saturday, Mr Gadkari said in Marathi that he will not bribe (give chai-paani to) the voters and that he would not indulge in corruption, nor let them indulge in it. 

“I have decided that I will not put up any banners or posters for the next Lok Sabha elections and will not give any chai-paani. You will not get the darshan of Goddess Lakshmi (a colloquial way of saying one won’t get money), nor will you get domestic or foreign liquor. I will not indulge in corruption and won’t let you indulge in it either,” he said.

Mr Gadkari, who is the minister for Road Transport and Highways, is the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from the Nagpur constituency.

On Thursday, the minister had said that the government is working on a policy to ensure that there are no potholes on national highways by the end of the year. The ministry is also preferring to undertake construction of roads using the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model as such projects are maintained better, he had said. 

Generally, road construction is done using three models – BOT, Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), and Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM).

“The roads which are constructed under the EPC mode require maintenance quite early whereas, under the BOT mode, roads are better constructed as the contractor knows that he will have to bear the cost of maintenance for the next 15-20 years,” news agency PTI quoted Mr Gadkari as saying.