Joshi embarrasses BJP, says no ‘personalised wave’
new delhi —— Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Murli Manohar Joshi has caused some red faces in his party, which claims that there is a massive “Narendra Modi wave” as the country votes to elect the 16th Lok Sabha, by saying that there was a “representative wave” and not a “highly personalised thing”.
“It’s not a highly personalised thing, it is a representative wave,” he said when asked if there was a Narendra Modi wave all over India during an interview with Manorama News, the television news channel of the Kerala-based Malayala Manorama group.
“Well.... again I say that this wave or that. Modi is the representative of the party as the prime ministerial candidate. And whenever a dynamic person moves with the support of the party he creates a very strong sympathy and support for him because of his track record also,” he said.
“He gets the support from different parts of the country, from different sections of the society, and from all leaders of BJP. So he represents the general mood and the desire for a change, you may call it a Modi wave. There is no harm in it. But it is a sum total what is happening inside the country. It represents that,” he said. Overall, Joshi, who is a former union minister and who is the BJP candidate from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, said the party would form the next government at the centre under the leadership of Modi.
“We will be in a position to form the government. And a situation will be there, either we reach the magic number or we will be very near to it. And others will join us. But once we cross a certain pinnacle or a certain hub, we will certainly be able to form the government. The government will be under the leadership of Modi,” he said.
He said the people of the country were in a mood to change the entire system because they are frustrated with the present situation.
“So when there is a mood, well it is difficult to assess where the mood will take us. We expect that if everything goes fine and we work in methodical and disciplined manner we may again perform the miracle,” he said. BJP president Rajnath Singh sought to put a lid on any speculation about a divide in the party by saying that Modi was the most popular leader in the country and he and the party could not be viewed separately.
“Nobody has said this. He is the prime ministerial candidate, which is why our slogan is around a Modi sarkar (government),” he told reporters who asked him about Joshi’s remarks.
Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley also insisted that there was “absolutely no difference” between a BJP wave and a Modi wave.
“We are hair-splitting. Today, there is absolutely no difference. Modi is leading the BJP campaign. So, where is the question of any controversy on whether it’s a Modi wave or a BJP wave? It’s a wave for our campaign, which is a Modi-led BJP campaign,” he said.
Asked about the much-talked about Gujarat model of development, Joshi said the BJP’s model of development for the country would draw from the best from all States for the benefit of the nation as a whole.
“You see in a country like India, what developmental model is true for Jammu Kashmir or Arunachal will not be true for Kerala. So to say that this model or that model... No. There should be a model which incorporates the situation and solution through ... for the entire country. And because it’s a diverse country in terms of geography, in terms of climate, in terms of resources, so we have to find out a model, in which there is a general economic model for the country, and region has its own specialties reflected and each region has its difficulties,” he said.
“For example, the coastal regions will have different problems. And there, too, the west coast has different problems from east coast. So we can’t say that whatever will be applied on the Western Ghats will also be applied to Sundarbans. No. There will be some similarity, but no total similarity. Similarly, what is true for Arunachal will not be true for Chhattisgarh. —