Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, 1 September, said that discipline these days is branded "autocratic", as he praised Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu for being a "disciplinarian" at the latter’s book launch.
After launching a book on experiences of Naidu during his first year as vice president of India and chairman of Rajya Sabha, Modi said that Naidu always provided visionary leadership whenever he was given a responsibility.
Venkaiah ji is a disciplinarian, but our country’s situation is such that it has become easy to call discipline undemocratic. If some one calls for discipline, he is branded autocratic...the whole dictionary is opened. But the discipline Venkaiah ji calls for, he himself follows it.PM Modi said at the launch
The prime minister said that Naidu had performed every duty given to him with the utmost diligence and had adopted that role with ease.
“He has been in public life for 50 years. 10 years in student politics and 40 years in state as well as national politics,” he said.
The 245-page book titled Moving on Moving forward: A year in office brings out Naidu's "mission of engagement" on four key issues with various stakeholders across the country, and its alignment with the mission of a new India in the making.
Naidu says in the book that his mission of exploring and shaping public discourse over four key issues took him on extensive travels across the country since he was sworn in as vice president on 11 August last year.
Modi said that former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had wanted to give Naidu a ministry in his government, but he said that Naidu had wanted to be the minister of rural development.
"Venkaiah ji is a farmer at heart. He is passionate about the welfare of farmers and agriculture,” Modi said.
"The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana came into being due to the efforts of Naidu Ji. In a time when political discourse was centred around train stoppages only, he ensured that leaders began to think more about roads and other forms of connectivity," he added.
At the book launch event, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, former prime ministers Manmohan Singh, H D Deve Gowda, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and senior Congress leader Anand Sharma were present on the dais.
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