A party spokesperson said that hundreds of BJP workers, panches, sarpanches, and municipal council members joined the rally and vowed to strengthen the party at the grassroots level. Riding in an open jeep and other party leaders, including former National Panthers Party leader Swan Singh Rathore, the minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, led the rally from the BJP headquarters at Batte-Balian in Udhampur town to Jharkhand.
Addressing the gathering, Singh said “unprecedented” development took place over the last eight years in Jammu and Kashmir in general and in the Udhampur district. “People are witnessing the massive development since 2014, which was not seen in the last seven decades,” the minister said. Singh said the Udhampur district got two national river and water rejuvenation projects -- the Devika river and the Mansar lake project.
“My parliamentary constituency received the highest allocation of PMGSY grants since 2014 in Jammu and Kashmir. Out of the Rs 4,175 crore of the PMGSY central funds for new projects, about Rs 3,884 crore have been allocated, which is nearly two-thirds of the funds for the hilly and barren terrain of Udhampur-Kathua-Doda,” he said. He said a centrally funded state-of-the-art health and wellness center is coming up at Mantalai in Udhampur which was "dumped" three decades ago by the then Congress government. “Udhampur-Kathua-Doda is possibly the only Lok Sabha constituency in the entire country which has received three centrally funded medical colleges in four years, one of which is for Udhampur,” the minister said.
