LIKE ATAL Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also used to pen down poems – but he prefers to call himself an “admirer of words” not a poet. An English translation of his “innermost thoughts”, which he had jotted in his diary during his travels before he became the Prime Minister, has just been published. “Letters to Self” is translated from Gujarati by Bhawana Somaaya. The poems – some joyous, some anguished scribbles as Modi says in the preface written in 2007– should not be equated to his position, but “reflects” his “feelings experienced” from his “little window of life”. But party leaders from Gujarat said some of them helped them understand Modi during his tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. They gave this one as an example: “Who cares about destiny? I am up for challenges/ I don’t borrow light/ I am the burning lantern/ Not dependent on outside glitter/I am confident with my own shine.” Modi wrote this in one titled as “Innocent”.
Like Old Times
BHUPENDRA SINGH Chaudhary, the BJP’s newly appointed Uttar Pradesh chief, received a warm welcome when he called on Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Sunday. A close aide of Tomar said the minister congratulated Chaudhary for his new assignment. The meeting refreshed their old memories of working together, when both leaders were tasked with the Assembly elections in Haryana. Tomar was in charge of the last Haryana Assembly elections, while Chaudhary was co-in-charge. For Chaudhary, the meeting was also significant in another way because Tomar, as a BJP general secretary, has been the party’s in-charge of UP affairs for a decade.
The Bengal Connect
WITH WEST Bengal being at the top in the BJP’s electoral agenda list, the party appears to be taking no chance when it comes to its preparations ahead of the next Lok Sabha election. The party continued its trend to flaunt the Bengali connection in its appointments to the state organisation. Like his predecessors, the newly appointed general secretary in charge of the state Sunil Bansal also has strong Bengali connections – his brothers are settled in Kolkata and he understands the language. Earlier, both Kailash Vijayvargiya and Sidharth Nath Singh, general secretary and secretary in charge of the state, respectively, had a strong Bengal connection as well – their wives were from the state. Varun Gandhi, the general secretary in charge of the state before Vijayvargiya, was also connected to the state through his wife Yamini Roy. BJP leaders think the connection has always worked in the party’s favour.