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Taking a jibe at Narendra Modi's Gujarat model, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat said only affluent sections in Gujarat have benefitted from it whereas the development model in his state has worked for the upliftment of the poor including farmers.
"The much flaunted Gujarat model is for the development of Gujarat's 2000 rich people only, unlike Uttarakhand's development model which seeks to improve the lot of the poor men and women who toil hard in the fields to grow millet," Rawat said yesterday.
He was addressing an election rally in Gopeshwar in support of Harak Singh Rawat, Congress candidate from Pauri Lok Sabha seat.
Alleging that the Gujarat development model had benefitted only a handful of affluent people, he said, "millionaires had become multi-millionaires and multi-millionaires billionaires under Modi's rule."
The Chief Minister claimed that Uttarakhand has become the first state in the country to give pension to farmer couples above the age of 60, regardless of their being in APL or BPL categories.
Rawat had recently described Gujarat as one of the worst performing states on the human development index in the country.
"Gujarat model of development is nothing but an inflated balloon. The BJP ruled state in fact figures along with 11 other states at the bottom of the human development index," Rawat had told reporters here recently.
Even Uttarakhand which saw one of the worst tragedies in its history last year presents a better model of development than Gujarat, he had claimed.
Drawing a comparison between the two states, he said, the amount given to widows as pension in Uttarakhand is Rs 800 whereas it is a paltry Rs 400 in Gujarat.
"Be it infant mortality rate in Gujarat which is among the highest in the country or any other parameter of human development index, Gujarat's performance has been one of the poorest," he had said.
