BJP needs bigger win for India's benefit: PM

Exhorting the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cadres to redouble their outreach in the 100 days leading up to the Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said that retaining power was not an end goal for personal glory but for securing the country's future.

- Smriti Kak Ramachandran

A third consecutive win for the party, the PM said, is imperative for the country's development by 2047, for keeping terrorism, corruption and inflation at bay, and for uninterrupted infrastructure development and economic growth.

"I am not someone who lives for his own happiness. I am advocating for a third term for the BJP not for political gains, but for the benefit of India," he said in his address on the concluding day of the party's national council meeting at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi.

The PM, who frequently attacks the Opposition for fostering dynastic politics and kinship over merit, sought to burnish his credentials as a leader committed to the country and its people.

"My efforts are dedicated to the people of India. The dreams of Indians are my commitments," Modi said in his nearly hour-long speech.

"I am a person who worries about the nation. If I had worried about my own home, it would not have been possible to make homes for crores of Indians... the dreams of crores of people are Modi's resolve and it is for the realisation of those dream that we work hard with seva bhav (selfless service)," he said.

Instructing the party workers to go to the people with a report card of the BJP's good governance, clean administration and blemish-free image of the PM ahead of the polls due this summer, he said neither his party nor he engaged in "rajneeti" (politics) but had been toiling for the sake of "rashtraneeti" (national policy).