While Bharatiya Janta Party’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is busy pitching his state’s model of development at his elections rallies, the upper echelons of the party still seem to be divided. Senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Sunday said that the Gujarat model of development may not be applicable to every other state.
“It is now the developmental model of the country as presented by BJP. In a country like India, what developmental model is true for Jammu and Kashmir or Arunachal Pradesh, may not be true for Kerala. So some good points may be there, some good points from the government of Tripura will also be there, it is not some straitjacket model,” he added.
Joshi also said that the suspension of Jaswant Singh from the party could have been avoided. “Jaswant Singh episode could have been avoided,” he said in an interview to Manorama news channel.
In statements that could fuel another controversy within the party, he also observed that there was no Modi wave in the country but only a BJP wave.
“Modi is a representative of the party as a PM candidate so it is not a highly personalised 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 said.
This is not the first time that differences between Joshi and Modi have come out in the open. Earlier, there were reports that the BJP’s manifesto was released late because of differences between the two leaders.
In another controversy, Joshi, who had to vacate Varanasi seat for Modi, was reluctant to contest from any other seat from Uttar Pradesh. Joshi is the sitting MP from Varanasi but has been shifted to Kanpur as BJP has fielded Modi from Varanasi.
Joshi, however, had played down all the reports relating to differences within the party. “My shifting to Kanpur was a decision of the party’s parliamentary board and I am happy with it,” he had said.
