PM Modi, UP CM Adityanath 'saints', says Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti

Ballia (UP): Union Minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti has dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as "saints" and credited the PM for "changing" the country's atmosphere.

Speaking at a religious event held here on Thursday, Jyoti, the Union Minister of State for Rural Development, said Modi has done in parliament what other prime ministers "did not want to do".

"PM Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath are sants (saints). The person whose life is dedicated to someone else is a sant," said Jyoti, who is also the Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

She lauded the prime minister for paving the way for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya and abrogating Article 370 which gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

The prime minister has "changed the atmosphere of the country", Jyoti said, without elaborating.

"The path for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya has been paved through Parliament. Today, the entire world is a fan of Modi," she said.

"Today in the Yogi government, the bulldozer is moving. In the previous governments, those who were close to MPs and MLAs indulged in criminal activities," Jyoti said.

Settling a fractious issue that goes back more than a century, the Supreme Court in a historic verdict on November 9, 2019, backed the construction of a Ram Temple by a trust at the disputed site in Ayodhya and ruled that an alternative five-acre plot must be found for a mosque in the Hindu holy town.