Former Union minister and Rajkot MP Parshottam Rupala, while speaking at a Viksit Gam programme in Rajkot, narrated how the village was brought to the “centre of the administrative system” with the Gokul gram yojana when the BJP first came to power in Gujarat in 1995. The scheme was an initiative of the late (former) chief minister Keshubhai Patel. As he narrated how the scheme progressed to ‘Nirmal gaam’ and then ‘ODF gaam’ for villages that were open defecation free, to the Samras gaam, where a village with a co-opted body is given financial incentives, Rupala said, “I am telling you responsibly: There was no pressure to elect a BJP sarpanch (to get this status).” He added that it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his tenure as Gujarat CM, who “dared to experiment with vikas (deve

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