NDA’s flagship road schemes were my ideas: Yashwant Sinha

The NDA government’s flagship projects -- National Highway Development Project (NHDP) and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) -- were my ideas, claims former Union minister Yashwant Sinha as he called out his then colleagues for “unfairly” misappropriating his ideas to themselves.

The diplomat-turned-politician held the finance and external affairs portfolios in former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet between 1998 and 2004. He also served as the finance minister under the leadership of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar during the brief period of 1990-91. “The national highway project was entirely my idea. For me, it (NHDP) was not a new thought.

I had nurtured it from the time I had been posted in Germany in the 1970s. Germany is famous for its autobahns (a federal controlled-access highway system),” writes Sinha in his recently out autobiography “Relentless”. “I had resolved way back then that I would bring similar autobahns to India whenever I had the chance,” he said.