NT NETWORK
PANAJI
BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday ruled out imposing a ban on beef in the state and said that cow slaughter has already been banned in the state since 1976.
Speaking at an interactive session with industrialists and professionals in the chartered accountancy and financial sector, Shah said the BJP does not run the country on the basis of caste or religion, but on humanity and justice.
Shah is on a two-day visit to Goa as part of his nationwide tour to strengthen the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“There are states in the country where minority population is more than Goa’s population, and they have benefitted from all the schemes. BJP is a people’s party and follows the collective approach to governance where the people actually both participate and take benefit of government’s policies,” Shah said.
Responding to a question from the audience whether the central government would look for a dual citizenship model, especially for the NRIs and Goans settled abroad, Shah said that they had earlier tried to bring in the model, but it was dropped due to security concerns. “But we will now definitely rethink on dual citizenship,” he said.
Replying to a question as to why petroleum and alcohol have been kept out of GST ambit, Shah said that many states get their revenue from the excise imposed on alcohol. Also, VAT and sales tax on petroleum bring in revenue. The states don’t want to share the revenue with the Centre, at least in the initial days of the GST regime.
Once, revenue under GST stabilises the GST Council will gradually bring in both trades under GST ambit, he said.
Speaking on health and education sectors, he said that there would be a marked change in these sectors in the coming years.
“We are moving in the right direction,” he observed.
“The government will soon form a committee to evaluate and finalise a new education policy for India. We have received solutions from committees and various government and non-governmental organisations to several challenges of the sector, including quality in school and higher education, employability challenge, regulation of private education, and research and development,” Shah said.
Speaking on growing tension with China on contentious security issues, Shah said the Modi government wants to keep good relations with the neighbouring countries.
“Our top-most priority has been border security and maintenance of country’s sovereignty. We will not act recklessly. But if someone uses force against us we will not sit quiet,” he said.
The BJP president also criticised former prime minister Manmohan Singh stating that in the previous UPA government nobody considered Singh as prime minister; but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has restored the pride associated with the post.
During the time of the previous government every minister used to think himself or herself as prime minister, he quipped.