Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: After stirring the hornet's nest by pitching for Narendra Modi as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, maverick lawyer and MP Ram Jethmalani has now claimed that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is also in favour of projecting Modi in 2014.
Jethmalani said that he had met Bhagwat over the issue and had received positive response from the RSS chief.
“I told him (Bhagwat) that Modi has better chance that anybody else and he is more qualified than anybody else….My impression, distinctly, was that he (Bhagwat) agreed with me on the issue,” Jethmalani told a news channel.
The RSS has reacted cautiously to Jethmalani’s claim. Spokesperson Ram Madhav said, “What Jethmalani said is his version, there is another version that of Bhagwatji.”
Madhav also stressed that RSS never involves in the affairs of the BJP. The decision on its prime ministerial candidate will have to be taken by the party itself.
Two days back, Jethmalani, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from the BJP, had sent a letter to BJP President Nitin Gadkari in which he demanded that the party must declare its prime ministerial candidate to help convince the voters in its pre-2014 election campaign.
"I do not think that the choice is difficult...I would want Narendra Modi whose integrity and administrative ability are not in doubt," Jethmalani said in his two-page letter.
The party, which has kept the issue of Prime Ministerial candidate in the backburner with several contenders on the scene, got the letter from Jethmalani who said he wanted to attend the recent Surajkund meeting of the national executive to which he was not invited.
First Published: Friday, October 19, 2012, 13:58