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External Affairs Minister and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj today said living up to people's expectations is a big challenge for Modi government as those "who give a mandate with so many aspirations don't have much patience" and it has to "deliver quickly".
"We have to deliver and we have to deliver quickly," she said in her address to a BJP's women cell meeting, adding that India's global prestige has gone up overnight after the NDA government took over and foreign ministers of different countries were in an overdrive to visit the country.
"I have always said the more votes you get, the bigger is the responsibility. Out struggle for 10 years has reached a logical conclusion and now the big challenge is to live up to people's huge expectations from us," she said.
Swaraj expressed her thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for giving her an important portfolio like MEA, saying women are generally given "soft" departments but Modi made her country's "first woman external affairs minister".
The ongoing rescue of Indians trapped in violence-hit Iraq was showcased as a success by her. "Not only 46 nurses, the much-publicised rescue of Indian paramedics who were in captivity in Iraq, but we have brought back 4000 Indians from there," she said as the audience applauded.
"India's prestige has gone up overnight. There is a clamour among foreign ministers of different countries to visit India. Not a single day goes when I don't meet one," Swaraj said, adding that all ministers are trying hard to meet people's expectations.
She asked woman workers to form groups to remind ministers of the promises made by the party so that they could be fulfilled at the earliest.
BJP's general secretary, organisation, Ram Lal said the party's aim is to win assembly elections in all the states in the next five years so that it could get majority in Rajya Sabha, where it is well short of the halfway mark, so that it could push its agenda.
