| RSS backs Modi as PM candidate, JD(U) fumes |
NAGPUR Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday backed Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as a candidate for the prime minister’s post and said that the country should have a prime minister who propounded Hindutva.
“To keep alive the Hindutva ideology, the Hindu ‘samaaj’ (society) should come together. And the country should have a prime minister who believes in that ideology or propounds that view,” Bhagwat told reporters here. Bhagwat’s comments came a day after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar hit out at Narendra Modi without naming him and said that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, should announce a secular prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Making clear its aversion for Modi, Janata Dal (U) virtually gave an ultimatum to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to desist from projecting the Gujarat chief minister as NDA’s prime ministerial candidate or be ready to snap the alliance.
The warning was given by party general secretary Shivanand Tiwari, who said that NDA cannot come to power with a “fanatic face” and JD(U) will not compromise on principles on which it had joined the opposition alliance in 1996. He said that surveys indicate that had the former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee dismissed Modi government in Gujarat for the post-Godhara riots in 2002, NDA would have still been in power and not lost the 2004 general elections.
“People who voted for BJP due to liberal face of Vajpayee went away from it after Gujarat riots and the floating votes went to Congress because people do not accept fanatic politics. Those people in BJP who want the party to come to power will have to realise that they cannot do it by putting a fanatic face in the front,” Tiwari said in an apparent reference to Modi.
Tiwari said JD (U) will not compromise on the secular framework based on which it had become a part of NDA, maintaining, “We will not compromise whether our government remains in Bihar or not.”
JD(U) chief and NDA convener Sharad Yadav declined to comment on the spat as Nitish Kumar’s remarks invited criticism from the RSS chief.
“Nitish is a responsible person. If he has said something on which somebody else has said something, what is the need for me to paraphrase it further,” was his brief remark on the issue. Yadav refused to answer questions on what was the sudden provocation for the Bihar chief minister to talk about NDA’s prime ministerial candidate.
Tiwari, however, said that there appears to be two lines of thinking in BJP today.
“One is that there is a need for a larger group like NDA if it wants to return to power as a government cannot be formed by propping up a fanatic face. The second line of thinking is to go back to its pre-1996 ideology.
“This is what is being reflected from the statement of the RSS chief. We want to tell Bhagwat that the country does not approve of this ideology and the BJP cannot form a government on the basis of such an ideology,” Tiwari said.
Reacting to Tiwari’s statement, BJP leader Balbir Punj said: “This is a needless controversy. Nobody has a right in this country to give fatwa as to who is secular and who is not.”
Agencies
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