BJP Patna meet hints Modi obvious PM choice

Sushil Kumar Modi,Bihar’s deputy CM till a week ago,hinted that the Gujarat CM was the obvious PM choice. “While the BJP parliamentary board may not have decided on a PM candidate,the people seem to have chosen Narendra Modi,who comes from a poor family. It is up to the people of the country to decide whom they want: a tea vendor’s son or one who gets his dress washed in England and celebrates his birthday in a foreign land (in a reference to Rahul Gandhi).”

All top state BJP leaders,including Ramlal,Ravi Shankar Prasad,Rajiv Pratap Rudy,C P Thakur,Mangal Pandey and Nand Kishore Yadav were present at the meeting.

Taking a dig at Nitish,Sushil Kumar Modi added that pride and arrogance often lead to one’s fall. “How can Narendra Modi be divisive when he is asking people of five lakh villages to give iron pieces to make a statue of Sardar Patel? The man who is now busy saving lives of people in Uttarakhand cannot be divisive.”

Syed Shahnawaz Hussain said the NDA government had perhaps erred in making Nitish railway minister at the expense of BJP leaders. Lashing out at Nitish’s “tilak and topi” speech during the JD(U) national council meeting in April,Hussain said: “Just by wearing a topi one does not become a well-wisher of Muslims. First the Congress did it,later the RJD and now the JD(U) is doing vote bank politics.”

Rajnath claimed he sensed a revolution in Bihar. “We usually see party workers with long faces after loss of power. Bihar is the first state where workers are rejoicing at an alliance split. I can sense a revolution,something similar to what happened after L K Advani’s arrest in Bihar or during the JP Movement earlier,” he said.

Rajnath invoked Advani again while talking about Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s “sacrifices”,pointing out that the BJP patriarch had recently referred to Mookerjee while urging all anti-Congress parties to join hands.

Praising the Gujarat model of development,Rajnath said: “America,England and other countries talk of Gujarat. And why Gujarat,our governments in Madhya Pradesh,Chhattisgarh and Goa have also achieved great development landmarks.”

Rajnath warned Nitish that he was inviting destruction of the JD(U) by leaning towards the Congress. Invoking Mahabharata,he described Nitish’s perceived closeness to the Congress as “Dhritrashtra aalingan (embrace of Dhritrashtra)”,suggesting that the Congress can destroy the JD(U) in the same manner as the Kaurava king had pulverised Bhima statue with a tight embrace after the Kauravas lost to the Pandavas. The Congress has a “history of destroying any party coming close to it”,he said.

On the contrary,Rajnath said,the BJP was large-hearted. “Even a drop of water on the petal of a lotus looks like a pearl,” he said.