Select Questioners: ‘Modi’s doctor’, ABVP leader

DR KAMLESH UPADHYAY
Ahmedabad
The 47-year-old teacher of medicine at B J Medical College and Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad has RSS links and claims he used to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal physician. Upadhyay claimed that the question on obesity that he asked on Mann Ki Baat was in fact the Prime Minister’s own idea.

Asked if he had asked the question on his own, Upadhyay said soon after the show was broadcast: “No, it was his (Modi’s) idea.”
Upadhyay is the Gujarat state president of the RSS-run National Medicos Organisation, and says he is a huge fan of Modi. “Certainly Modiji knows me personally and also that I am his huge fan. I was his physician when he was here in Gujarat. I admire Modiji for his vision and dream for India to make it shine in the world. India is going to be the next superpower… Modiji and Obama share so many similarities,” he said.

OM PRAKASH
New Delhi
The M.Phil student and convener of the Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University was elected to the university’s students’ union on an ABVP ticket last year. Om Prakash belongs to a small village in Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu; his father is a farmer; one of his brothers is a labourer in Dubai.

Story continues below this ad

Om Prakash said he had submitted the question — on the approach of leaders at a time when youth were no longer constrained by time and boundaries — on the ‘mygov’ site, and realised it had been chosen only when he heard it on radio on Tuesday.

He rejected the suggestion that his question had been selected because of his politics.

“My family has nothing to do with BJP. Anybody who comes and listens to them gets their vote. I was elected from the ABVP, but I did not write about my ABVP link when I asked the question,” he said.