Narendra Modi calls on Rajnath Singh, discusses 2014 polls

New Delhi, Jan 27: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today met BJP president Rajnath Singh and urged him to guide the party's state unit in the run-up to the next general elections.

The duo held a nearly two-hour-long discussion at Singh's residence here. Afterwards, Modi told newspersons that besides conveying his best wishes to the new party chief, he wanted to find out how exactly to proceed in Gujarat.

"I asked what were his suggestions with regard to the state government. I sought his guidance in this respect and got it. BJP's Gujarat unit should be useful in the service of the country, we had a detailed discussion about that too," he said. To a specific query, the Gujarat chief minister replied that they "discussed 2014 at length as well."

Referring to Modi, Singh said: "He had congratulated me on the phone the day I was elected as the BJP president. He promised to meet me in Delhi. Today he came and we sat together to talk about Gujarat and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections."

Though the BJP chief evaded questions about Modi being projected as the party's prime ministerial nominee before the LS polls, it is worth noting that the two leaders were meeting for the first time after Singh succeeded Nitin Gadkari.

The latter was forced to quit as Income Tax officials had started conducting an on-field probe into the "shell" companies which had made big investments in Purti Power and Sugar Limited.

Despite the Purti Group asserting that it "has nothing to do with the actions of IT department" and Gadkari alleging that the department's act "smacks of the ruling UPA's nefarious designs to create confusion in the BJP ranks", he decided not to serve a second term in office. Rajnath was thus surprisingly catapulted into the top job.

Modi calling on him just days later assumes particular significance because of not only the aforementioned developments but also due to the fact that unlike Gadkari, Singh seems to be comfortable with the idea of Modi assuming a larger role in national politics.

OneIndia News