Surat/New Delhi: While speaking at an event in Surat of Gujarat on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stopped abruptly while addressing the gathering. He was there to inaugurate a new terminal building.

Breaking his characteristic flair while he was in his elements comparing the number of houses constructed during UPA and NDA regimes and the number of air flyers, PM Modi stopped and gestured his officers and SPG personnel to help a cameraman who had fainted.

The prime minister saw the cameraman going weak in his knees at the stage he was standing on to cover the event and stopped. He resumed his speech after the cameraman, identified as Kishan Ramolia, was rushed away to a hospital in a 108 ambulance.

This, however, was not the first time that the prime minister had paused his speech midway to accommodate something significant. Last year, he had halted for full four minutes for azaan — the Muslim call for prayer — while addressing activists at the Delhi headquarters of the party after BJP’s massive victories in the northeast: Tripura and Nagaland.

Earlier, in 2013, he was criticised when a video went viral of him continuing his Independence Day speech even as a cop had fainted when he was Gujarat chief minister. However, it was later found to be doctored footage.

What PM Modi said in the Surat rally
 

  • In his speech, Prime Minister Modi said: "The previous government (of UPA) made 25 lakh houses across India. To provide shelter to the poor people, the BJP-led central government has made 1.30 crore houses in the last four years. If they had to do the amount of work I am doing, then they would have taken 25 more years".
     
  • "The change that people are witnessing in India is because of the power of the vote and not the power of Modi. For 30 years, coalition governments ran the country. All of them took their benefit from it. One prime reason behind the development of India is that people have given votes intelligently and gave freedom to the country from coalition," the PM added.
     
  • The Prime Minister went on to add that the "young generation can see that, the government with a fruitful majority can take strong as well as big decisions".
     
  • "It can take the country forward powerfully. The government with a fruitful majority is answerable also. Today, anybody can ask me, 'What have you done in the last four-and-half years?' If it was a coalition government, I could have made excuses," Prime Minister Modi said.
     
  • "LED bulbs, which used to cost Rs 350 per piece earlier, today can be bought for Rs 40-50. Now don't ask that if the Rs 40 bulb used to be sold at Rs 350 earlier, then where the remaining amount used to go. Don't ask me that. Rajiv Gandhi gave an answer to this. He already said that from Rs 1 only 15 paise used to reach people. Everybody knows in whose hands the remaining 85 paise used to go," he added.
     
  • Modi said, "Surat airport is currently the third biggest airport in Gujarat. As many as 1,200 domestic and 600 international passengers can be looked after here after the completion of the new terminal. Current the airport gets four lakh footfalls in a year. This will go up to 26 lakhs in the future."
     
  • "Besides air connectivity, the government is also working towards making Passport Seva Kendra available. We don't want people to go to big cities for passports. In 2014, there were 80 Passport Seva Kendra in India. With the BJP government's efforts, the numbers have now gone over 400," he added.