"Two Fathers of the Nation...": Amruta Fadnavis's "New India" Title For PM

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's wife Amruta Fadnavis termed PM Narendra Modi "Father of the Nation", but then tweaked it a bit to also cover Mahatma Gandhi, who is usually given that honorific.

During an interview on stage at an event organised by a writers' association in Nagpur this week, she was asked what Mahatma Gandhi would be as she called PM Modi "rashtra-pita".

"Mahatma Gandhi is the Father of the Nation and Modi-ji is the Father of New India. There are two Fathers of the Nation — one from this era, one from that era," she said, speaking in Marathi,

This is not the first time she's used the analogy for Narendra Modi.

In a message for the PM in 2019, she had tweeted: "Wishing the Father of our Country Narendra Modi ji a very Happy Birthday — who inspires us to work relentlessly towards the betterment of the society." 

Often in the news for her social media posts and public statements, Amruta Fadnavis had earlier this year taken a dig at the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in the middle of a Shiv Sena mutiny that led to his unseating. 

"Ek 'Tha' Kapati Raja... (Once there was a wicked king)," she wrote in a tweet that she later deleted. Her reference to a "king" and the quotation marks she used around 'Tha' ('was') were seen as a reference to Mr Thackeray.

Her husband became the deputy when Sena mutiny leader Eknath Shinde became Chief Minister.