Modi’s Friday date with Delhi

NEW DELHI; Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi will join LK Advani at an anti-terror rally to be held by the BJP here on Friday to carry ahead its campaign highlighting the failure of the UPA government in handling terrorism.

Modi is being projected by the BJP on the national scene as its mascot in the fight against terrorism. This was also apparent last week at the BJP national executive meeting where Modi made an intervention in the discussion on the political resolution, the first chief minister to do so.

The first indication of his emerging role had come earlier in Delhi where he shared the dais with Advani to speak about terrorism after the Gujarat police claimed to have solved the serial bomb attacks in the state.

On Friday, Modi will visit the blast site at Karol Bagh before addressing the rally at the Ajmal Khan Park in the same area. This would be his first major rally in the national capital.

“The September 13 bomb blasts in Delhi were a government-assisted act of terrorism. It could not have succeeded if the Delhi and central governments had taken lessons from the October 2005 blasts and heeded the Gujarat chief minister’s repeated warnings about an imminent terror strike,” said Delhi BJP chief Harshvardhan.

The BJP also got a boost on Tuesday with the report of the Administrative Reforms Commission calling for a stringent anti-terror law which the party has been rooting for. BJP national spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said the supreme court had also been of this view.

s_rajesh@dnaindia.net