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Manish Tewari derides BJP, Rajnath Singh over PM candidate

Monday, Yashwant Sinha went public demanding that Gujarat chief minister be declared the party's PM candidate

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Kavita Chowdhury New Delhi
Last Updated : Feb 06 2013 | 7:28 AM IST

I & B minister and Congress leader Manish Tewari has derided BJP chief Rajnath Singh’s feeble attempts to prevent his party colleagues from voicing their opinions on the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. The growing chorus by several BJP leaders to name Narendra Modi as chief minister has drawn a lot of flak for the BJP from its NDA allies. Taking a dig at Rajnath Singh Tewari tweeted that “such home remedies cannot treat chronic delusionites.”

Ridiculing the BJP partyleaders as "chronic delusionites", Tewari tweeted, “Even Rajnath Singhji's home remedies can't treat the chronic delusionites his esteemed colleagues suffer from. Fantansyland is addictive place.”

Yesterday, a desperate Rajnath Singh had virtually issued a gag order to party men after Yashwant Sinha went public demanding that the Gujarat chief minister be declared the party’s PM candidate ahead of the polls. This threatened to snowball into a gigantic controversy when ally JD(U) expressed its reservations and chief minister Nitish Kumar a known Modi baiter asked the BJP to come clean on its stand.  

While this spurred Rajnath Singh to swing into damage control and issue the gag order;

“I want to humbly appeal to BJP workers and leaders that there should be no statement from them on who will be the candidate for the Prime Minister's post. As I have said earlier, the BJP convention is that any decision on the chief ministerial or prime ministerial candidate is taken by the Central Parliamentary Board.” Despite this soon senior leaders CP Thakur and Shatrughan Sinha defied him reiterating the demand for Modi as PM.

CP Thakur went on record to say, “The BJP will gain (by declaring Modi the candidate). By declaring him (Modi) the candidate BJP will certainly gain because of many factors... There is a feeling among the people that he should be the candidate.” Shatrughan Sinha also chipped in saying he supports senior leader Yashwant Sinha.

Congress leaders meanwhile are observing these antics within the BJP for the Prime Minister’s post with much amusement.

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First Published: Feb 05 2013 | 1:59 PM IST

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