Rajnath praises Gujarat chief minister but doesn't name him as BJP's PM candidate.
It came as no surprise when chief minister Narendra Modi and several other top leaders of the BJP praised Mahatma Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajapayee at the party function in Ahmedabad on Saturday.
It was obvious that they were pitching not for the party faithful who had turned up for the BJP’s 33rd foundation day ceremony but for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In what was seen as a show of strength by Modi, more than 50,000 people turned up for the foundation day ceremony organized by the state unit of the BJP at Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad.
National BJP president Rajnath Singh, state party chief RC Faldu and Modi gave Gandhi and Vajpayee the credit for their development agenda even as they blamed the Congress for the country’s ills.
The newfound bonhomie between Modi and Rajnath Singh was also visible with the Gujarat chief minister describing the latter as his “margadarshak (guide)”. Singh dubbed Modi the most popular BJP leader.w Besides praising Modi, Singh said, “It was the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee that had controlled inflation.”
He went on to praise the Gujarat chief minister for “realising the dreams” that Gandhi had seen for the nation.
“The Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi had seen dreams for the nation. Narendra Modi has made the dreams come true by developing Gujarat. The BJP will make it a reality for the whole country too,” said Singh.
In his speech, Modi claimed BJP was one of the rare parties which had come to power at the Centre in its “youth”. In an interesting comparison, he said Britain’s Labour Party had taken 80 years after its formation to achieve this.
Without naming Rahul Gandhi, the Gujarat chief minister criticized him for calling the country a “beehive” at a function organized recently by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). “There is a difference between the character of the Congress and the BJP,” he said.
“For you, this might be a beehive but for us this country is our mother…This is a sacred land of saints and seers. Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to say every particle of this land is Lord Shankar for us,” Modi said.
Vajpayee had offended Modi in 2002 when he visited Gujarat after the communal riots and later advised him to practice ‘raj dharma’. After that, Modi rarely mentioned Vajpayee in any speech but, on Saturday, he praised the former prime minister effusively.
“Atal Bihari used to say: Kankar kankar hamare liye Shankar hai (Every stone is like Lord Shankar for us). Ganga me bahati hui haddi par kan laga kar suno to usme bhi awaz ati hai: Bharat Mata ki jai (Even bones flowing in river Ganga say Bharat Mata ki jai.),” said the Gujarat chief minister.
In fact, in the run up to Saturday’s rally, the state BJP had played an audio tape of Vajpayee’s speech delivered on April 6, 1980, the foundation day of the BJP.
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