A day after he led the BJP to an unprecedented triumph in the parliamentary polls, Narendra Modi, set to be India’s next prime minister, Saturday undertook victory laps in Delhi and Varanasi, the second Lok Sabha seat he has won, and taunted Congress over its historic loss.
Late in the evening in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi, he took a jibe at Congress for its pathetic loss, as it was limited to 44 Lok Sabha seats.“We have heard about coalitions to form government but now we have a situation where they need alliance for opposition,” Modi said in Varanasi after he offered prayers at Kashi Vishwanath Temple, referring to the party’s unprecedented, poor show.
In New Delhi, the BJP office was converted in a fortress, but it could do little to keep the party workers and supporters away who kept gathering outside the premise, dancing to the tune of bands playing on the cordoned, decorated road.
Modi attended a meeting of party’s parliamentary board of the party, which decided to meet May 20 to formally elect him as its leader.
“It is a mere formality, there is no need to tell who will be elected,” Rajnath Singh said after the meeting, which was attended by veteran party leader LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi, Arun Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu, and Amit Shah along with others.
Modi then left for Varanasi, the second Lok Sabha seat he won along with Vadodara.
In the holy city, where he defeated Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal and Congress’ Ajay Rai, Modi performed a ritualistic ‘puja’ at the Vishwanath temple, one of the most pious Shiva temples.
He then participated in a Ganga arti at the bank of the river, holy for Hindus.
“I was stopped from speaking to my people in Varanasi. In spite of that, people voted for me. They put a stamp on my silence,” he said in an indirect reference to the Election Commission which had stopped him from holding a rally in a Beniyabagh, a Muslim dominated area, on security grounds.
Modi also promised to clean up the holy city.
“By 2019, when we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, we should have cleaned up the country,” Modi said on the banks of the river.
BJP became the first non-Congress party since Independence in 1947 to win a comfortable majority on its own in the 545-member Lok Sabha. – IANS
