Patna:
Bihar deputy Chief Minister and senior-most BJP leader in the state Sushil Modi has denied saying that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will not be invited to a BJP rally in Patna in April next year. The rally is meant to be a show of strength by the party.
The Bihar deputy CM has said that he had given no "formal" interview to the newspaper that reported him saying that Narendra Modi will not be invited. Sushil Modi said today that the rally was still six months away and that the central BJP leadership will take a decision on this.
Last week, state BJP president CP Thakur had announced that the party would invite the Gujarat Chief Minister for the rally.
On Wednesday, he changed his position, after the newspaper report. "We had said we would call him. But if Sushil Modi is saying this, we will sit together and discuss the matter," Mr Thakur told IANS.
But within these denials and counter statements is the underlying tension over the Gujarat Chief Minister and the JD(U)-BJP alliance in Bihar. The JD(U) and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar have been vocal in their criticism of Narendra Modi for the stain of Gujarat riots, in which more than 1,000 Muslims died in 2002.
The JD(U) has a strong political base in the minority vote in Bihar, which it can't afford to alienate.
So strong is the animosity that Mr Kumar has said he will break the alliance with the BJP if it officially promotes Narendra Modi as its PM candidate. Sushil Modi too on several occasions has expressed his discomfort with the Gujarat CM's projection as the BJP's next PM candidate. He had said recently that his own Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, is an ideal candidate for PM.
Mr Kumar had also objected to his photographs with Narendra Modi in newspaper advertisements during the BJP national executive meeting in Patna in June 2010. The Bihar CM had also virtually barred Mr Modi from coming to Bihar for campaigning in the assembly elections, when other BJP leaders had participated.
(With Inputs from agencies)