New Delhi:
Congress leader Sheila Dikshit has qualified her headline-making comment describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a "man with a vision". Today, she told NDTV: "Vision means nothing if there is no change on the ground."
Mr Modi, she said, was a "good communicator but people have elected him for what he can do for them, not to hear him speak."
The former Kerala governor and three-time chief minister of Delhi was quoted by the Indian Express newspaper this morning as saying that when she met PM Modi in July, she saw a confident man with a vision and a new language.
"I said when I met him I found him a confident man, a man who had a vision. But I said there was no visibility of the vision. There is talk, yes, everyday a vision is being given to the people, but no action is being taken," Ms Dikshit told NDTV.
"I don't think I have said anything wrong. That was my impression of the man and I stand by it. But what he said five months ago, nothing has come on the ground. Have prices come down? Have all those people whose bank accounts were supposed to have been made public? All these are questions which everybody is beginning to ask," said the 76-year-old Congress veteran.
Ms Dikshit is the second Congress leader after Kerala MP Shashi Tharoor to appear appreciative of PM Modi, who took power in May after his party, the BJP, defeated the Congress-led UPA in the national election.
She sought to draw a distinction between her comments and those of Mr Tharoor, who was dropped as Congress spokesperson for what was seen as his "constant and unnecessary adulation" of PM Modi.
"The context is not same at all....yes he looked confident and seemed to have good vision. But all this vision he comes out with practically every day, every week, has yet to reach the people and unless people feel the vision is touching them, I don't think a vision is a vision," Ms Dikshit told NDTV.