Vital to begin growth progress from Bengal: Modi

Gujarat Chief Minister Tuesday accused the UPA government of discriminating against non-Congress ruled states. "Defying the constitution, the UPA government has been constantly discriminating between states ruled by the parties in the UPA coalition and those run by non-UPA parties," Modi said here. "The need is to raise voices against this discrimination," he told a meeting of entrepreneurs. Modi said such discrimination was shattering the dreams of many states including West Bengal. "People have elected them but that does not mean they have the power to discriminate." To buttress his point, Modi referred to the relations between the NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Left Front government in West Bengal between 1998 and 2004. "Here we had a Communist government. In Delhi, we had the Vajpayee government. Ideologically, there can be no meeting ground between us and the Communists. "But during those years there was no complaint of discrimination from Bengal," he said at a meeting organised by the MCC Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Indian Chamber of Commerce and Bharat Chamber of Commerce. He said this bias by the central government was threatening national integrity. "When states do well, the (central) government comes forward to take credit. But if anything goes wrong, the onus is on the state government. "They must learn to take the entire country along."