I’ve no diffrence with Narendra Modi: Joshi

Kanpur: Senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Monday dismissed reports projecting him as saying there was no Modi wave in the country and denied there were any differences between them.
Joshi, who is contesting the Lok Sabha elections from here, was seeking to clarify reports arising out of a television interview that he had dismissed a Modi wave in the country and that it was only for the party.

Referring to the debate over growth model, he said he had always maintained that India was a huge country with several climatic zones and agro-diversities and there could be no one strait-jacket model for the entire country.

Joshi said the development model of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be applied to Kerala and what applies to coastal area cannot fit desert region.

He said the BJP manifesto provides for various councils to go into issues and find solutions for development of various zones.
BJP sought to downplay Joshi’s remarks that there was no Modi wave in the country but only a BJP wave, saying the party and Modi cannot be viewed separately and rejected suggestions of any infighting.

BJP chief Rajnath Singh said that Joshi’s statement was wrongly interpreted.

“No one has said anything like that. BJP has presented Modi as its Prime Minister candidate and in such a situation BJP wave or Modi wave cannot be viewed separately,” Rajnath told reporters in Lucknow.

“Modi is the most popular leader of the country and the people want to see him as PM,” he said, adding, “We cannot see Modi and BJP separately. We all are part of BJP”.

The BJP national president said that the decision to declare Modi as the PM candidate was taken by the central parliamentary board. He stressed that BJP was a cadre based party.

But Rajnath on Monday said that even Modi had not said so.

In Amethi, party vice president Smriti Irani denied that the remarks reflected the differences between the leaders.

“There is no infighting in the party at all,” she said, adding that “the way Dr Joshi gives blessings is different from others”.
Joshi, who had to make way for Modi for the Varanasi Parliamentary seat, said their PM candidate was just a “representative” of the party for the top post and was getting support from across the country and BJP leaders.

“Modi is a representative of the party as a PM candidate…so it is not a highly personalized thing (the wave). It is a representative wave.

“He gets support from different parts of the country, from sections of the society and from all leaders of the BJP,” he had told “Manorama News” in controversial remarks. Asked if the party would consider dropping Modi’s name from its slogan from ‘Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkar’ and replace it with BJP or NDA, Rajnath Singh today said it was “natural to have Modi’s name in the party slogan as he has been projected as the prime ministerial candidate”.

On a question related to making public the communication between the then PM Atal Behari Vajpayee and Modi in the year 2002, Rajnath said that as far as timing was concerned, the Election Commission was there to look into it.

“The biggest communal party is Congress,” he alleged.