The Narendra Modi thread

[Crookbond]

All these traits remind of me a certain Kim Jong Il. Here's one fact about KJI which always cracks me up

According to his biography, he first picked up a golf club in 1994, at North Korea's only golf course, and shot a 38-under par round that included no fewer than 11 holes in one. Satisfied with his performance, he reportedly immediately declared his retirement from the sport.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/8965694/50-fascinating-facts-Kim-Jong-il-and-North-Korea.html

[The Outsider]

the article mainly points out modi`s PR machinery..he has the freedom to write his view..read some comments under the articles' date='most people have lambasted jatin(the author) which they have a right to,some have praised the article..nowt wrong tbh[/quote'] The comments are a combination of: 1. Lack of understanding of English: By those who accused him of saying it was Modi/Gujarat's PR agency which planted the Uttarakhand story. Nowhere in the article does he say or imply that. 2. Intellectual Bankruptcy: By those who started calling him a Congress stooge or similar. If you have read other articles of his, you would know how many dozens of articles he has written criticizing the Congress. 3. Poor logic and Red Herrings: By those who have started bringing in things like the '84 riots. 4. Downright Abuse of the author: A classic case of shooting the messenger. 5. Supporting the views in the article: By those who agree with his article. What is glaringly missing is a criticism of the points expressed in the article. Points 1-4 are very common traits of Modi supporters - many on ICF show the same traits like someone did yesterday by asking a poster if he supports corruption when the poster had made a statement about why he does not like BJP.

[The Outsider]

No Clean Chit For Mr Modi

In an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013, Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister has made a desperate attempt to create an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on 27.4.2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has allowed this impression to gain credibility. The facts in relation to Supreme Court and SIT are as follows: The SIT was appointed by the Supreme Court on 26.3.2008 on a petition by Teesta Setalvad, D.N.Pathak, Cedric Prakash and Others, first to look into the nine cases recommended by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to be investigated by the CBI. The same SIT was a year later also asked to look into the criminal complaint against Narendra Modi and 61 others filed first before the Gujarat Police on 8.6.2006. The SIT submitted its report on the Zakia Jafri and CJP Complaint to the Supreme Court on 12.5.2010 itself recommending that Further Investigation was required. In the interim, the SC had also to drop two officers from the SIT, Shivandand Jha (because he was an accused in the Zakia Jafri complaint) and Geeta Johri who had been found, in the Sohrabuddin case to have serious strictures passed against her by the Supreme Court itself. (April 6 2010) The following features of the SIT report need special mention: It found the speeches of N Modi objectionable and that Modi had a communal mindset, travelling 300 kilometres to Godhra but not visiting any relief camps that housed the internally displaced Muslims, victims of reprisal killings post Godhra until 6.3.2002. It found it questionable that bodies of the unfortunate Godhra victims were handed over to a non-government person, Jiadeep Patel of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) who is currently facing trial in the Naroda Gaam massacre case; It found that Saneev Bhatt an officer of the State Intelligence, Gujarat had opined that he attended the controversial meeting at the chief minister's residence indicating that illegal and objectionable instructions were given. It accepted that Police Officers like RB Sreekumar, Rahul Sharma, Himanshu Bhatt and Samiullah Ansari who had performed their tasks legally had been penalised and persecuted by the Modi regime and those who had buckled under the illegal and unconstitutional instructions had been favoured consistently; It however still concluded that there is no prosecutable evidence against the chief minister The SC was not satisfied with this conclusion and directed that the Amicus Curiae Mr Raju Ramachandran, who had already been appointed to assist the Supreme Court in this critical case, visit Gujarat, independently assess the evidence garnered and meet with witnesses directly, bypassing SIT. Amicus Curiae Raju Ramachandran submitted an Interim report (January 2011) and Final report (July 2011). The Supreme Court gave the SIT an opportunity to further investigate in light of the Amicus Curiae's contrary findings and thereafter file a Final Report before a Magistrate on 12.9.2011. In the same order the SC gave the petitioners the inalienable right to file a Protest petition and access all documents related to the SIT After its further investigation the SIT, ignoring the contents of the Amicus Curiae report, filed a final closure report on 8.2.2012 without issuing any notice to the complainant Zakia Jafri and CJP as is required under Section 173(2)(ii) of the CRPC. Worse, it fought a hard as nails battle to deny access to any of the documents related to the investigation to the petitioners. It took a whole year, from 8.2.2012 to 7.2.2013 for the complainant to access all the documents related to the Investigation including the SIT Reports filed before the Supreme Court. The complainant Zakia Jafri assisted by the CJP filed the Protest Petition on 15.4.2013. The petitioners Mrs. Zakia Jaffri and CJP are now arguing in support of the Protest Petition being allowed, showing through an arduous and rigorous process, how the SIT ignored its own evidence. Arguments that began on June 25 are still going on. It is clear from the above that the SC has never given Mr Modi a clean chit on the issue of 2002 pogrom. These facts could have been earlier verified by Reuters as well as the collusive media. We hope that the media will present the facts truthfully in relation to the ‘so-called’ clear chit to Mr Modi

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?286929

[FischerTal]

^ Amicus curiae's investigation weighs more than an independent SIT investigation :hatsoff:

[FischerTal]

Source:http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sit-rejects-amicus-curiaes-observations-against-modi/article3401728.ece SIT rejects amicus curiae's observations against Modi

The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team has totally disagreed with the observations of amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran, and said no case can be made out against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in connection with the 2002 communal riots under any of the Sections of the Indian Penal Code mentioned by him. Mr. Ramachandran, in his report, which formed part of the SIT closure report submitted in the Ahmedabad metropolitan court, observed that prima facie offences under Sections 153 A (1)(a) and (b), 153 B (1)©, 166 and 505 (2) of the IPC could be made out against Mr. Modi for his alleged “instructions” to police officers to “go soft on the Hindu rioters” and his subsequent role in handling the riots and alleged offensive media statements that could have contributed to instigating violence. Giving point-by-point answers to all observations made by the amicus curiae after investigating the charges, as directed by the Supreme Court, the SIT said: “The offences under the aforesaid sections of law are not made out against Mr. Modi.” The report signed by the investigation officer in the Zakia Jafri petition case, Deputy Commissioner of Police Himanshu Shukla, said, “in the light of the aforesaid facts, a closure report in being submitted for favour of perusal and orders.” (Ms. Jafri, wife of the slain former Congress MP Ahesan Jafri, levelled serious charges against Mr. Modi and 62 others in connection with the communal riots.) The SIT dismissed as “false and fabricated documents” two “fax messages” claimed to have been sent by the suspended IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who was then Deputy Commissioner in the State intelligence branch, to the Chief Minister and Minister of State for Home Gordhan Jhadafiya, with copies to the Ahmedabad Police Commissioner, the State police control room and others, alerting them about the developing communal situation. The “fax messages,” which claimed that the Chief Minister was informed in advance of the tension building up in Gulberg Society and that the city Police Commissioner was informed of the need for advanced preparations for possible communal repercussions in view of the government's decision to bring the bodies of the victims of the Godhra train carnage to Ahmedabad, were cited as examples of “dereliction of duty” on the part of the Chief Minister, his Cabinet colleagues and the senior police officers. Concocted fax messages The SIT found that no such fax messages ever existed and that these were concocted by Mr. Bhatt at a much later stage and the signatures of his superior officers were forged. Neither those claimed to be recipients nor the purported senders in the State or city police control rooms or the control room of the Home Ministry remembered anything about receiving or sending any such message. Office records did not show the existence of any such message and there also was no mention of the numbering of these messages in the subsequent official messages, which normally was the practice. The SIT report pointed out that Mr. Bhatt himself did not mention about the existence of these messages in any of the affidavits or statements he had filed before numerous authorities all these years. For the first time, he produced a “copy” of the messages before the G. T. Nanavati-Akshay Mehta Judicial Enquiry Commission in December last and subsequently before the SIT in January this year. Pointing out that Mr. Bhatt did not mention about the fax messages when SIT official A. K. Malhotra questioned him in connection with the Zakia Jafri petition in 2009, nor during the investigation by Mr Shukla in 2010, the SIT report said: “The oral and documentary evidence available on record would therefore conclusively prove that these fax messages now produced by Mr. Bhatt have been fabricated subsequently with an ulterior motive. No reliance can, therefore, be placed upon both these fax messages.” The SIT virtually exonerated the then Police Commissioner, P. C. Pande, his deputies M. K. Tandon and P. B. Gondia and some other police officers of the charge of dereliction of duty, and said the investigation proved that they had tried to curb the riots to the best of their ability given the limited resources available at their command to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation. When the police arrived at any scene of riot, “the violent mobs hid themselves in lanes and bylanes and regrouped and resumed violence” as soon as the police left to attend another complaint. The SIT said it was not possible to withdraw the entire police force from the known communally sensitive areas for deployment in areas like Gulberg Society or Naroda-Patiya which had no communal history in the past. Appreciation for Pande's role The SIT appreciated the role played by Mr. Pande in dismissing a mob which was attempting to set fire to a dargah adjacent to the Police Commissioner's office. It pointed out that Mr. Pande heard some noise when he was in the office in the afternoon of February 28, 2002, and came to know that a mob was trying to vandalise the dargah. With the available police force by then dispatched to Gulberg Society, he took only an armed guard and succeeded in chasing away the violent mob and saved the dargah. The SIT report, giving details of the roles played by different police officers and how they attempted to handle the situation, said there was no indication that the police were given any instruction from the higher-ups not to act or leave the affected areas to the mercy of the riotous mobs. About the observation by the amicus curiae that the then Vishwa Hindu Parishad State general secretary Jaideep Patel being “handed over” bodies of the train carnage victims for transport to Ahmedabad was indicative of an instruction having come from “somebody very high,” the SIT pointed out that all through the journey by road from Godhra the five trucks which carried the bodies were accompanied by the police officers concerned and handed over to the police officers in charge at the Sola civil hospital in Ahmedabad. As the bodies were those of VHP kar sevaks, Mr Patel was allowed to accompany the police during the journey. The then Godhra mamlatdar and executive magistrate, M. L. Nalvaya, “erroneously” prepared the handing over papers in the name of Mr. Patel, for which the SIT recommended departmental action against him. But there was nothing to show that Mr. Modi had ordered the “handing over” of the bodies to Mr. Patel. The SIT also dismissed Mr. Ramachandran's observations about “positioning of the two Cabinet Ministers at the instruction of Mr. Modi” in the State and the city police control rooms with the intention of interfering with the police functioning, and said its investigation proved that late Ashok Bhatt did not visit the city police control room except briefly on March 1 to pick up the then Defence Minister, George Fernandes, who was discussing with the City Police Commissioner deployment of the Army. The then Urban Development Minister did visit the State police headquarters in Gandhinagar for about a couple of hours on February 28, but was made to sit in an empty cabin and he never entered the control room. “There is no proof that they were either acting at the instruction of the Chief Minister or had even once interfered with the police functioning.” Charges not substantiated The report said the allegations of Mr. Modi making provocative statements over the media could not be substantiated. The allegation of his having told Zee TV in an interview that the Gulberg Society massacre was the “result of the provocative firing from inside” by Ahesan Jafri could not be established as the channel, despite several reminders, did not produce the CD of the recording. The second instance of The Times of India quoting him on Newton's theory of action and reaction to justify the riots as a reaction to the Godhra train carnage was also found baseless. The State Information Department promptly issued a denial that Mr. Modi did not speak to The Times of India at all and the newspaper was forced to carry the denial, though deliberately in an obscure corner, the SIT said. It also dealt with the alleged “shoddy” handling of the post-riot situation by the government under Mr. Modi, and said action was recommended against the officers responsible for inaccurate police investigations or the alleged “political appointments” of special public prosecutors to handle the riot-related cases.

[bulbul]

Lol @ haterz,picking sillly things from internet to abuse Modi.

[bulbul]

Narendra Modi and Congress are "brothers" and two sides of a same coin, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said while asserting that only a person who is loved by all sections of people could be a national leader. "Both Narendra Modi and Congress are brothers. Congress and Modi are both sides of a same coin," Banerjee said while addressing a panchayat election rally at Berhampore in Murshidabad district

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/narendra-modi-congress-are-both-sides-of-a-same-coin-says-mamata/407720-37.html Hope Con party/Phsecular supporters won't feel bad :nervous:

[bulbul]

Teesta Setalwad B-> :hysterical::hysterical::hysterical::hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:

Saar , Don't you know how logic works here? Its very simple - some peoples articles are gospels, others articles are BS.

[The Outsider]

Playing the caste card as well - so much for leader with a difference.

Asking the state leadership to identify leaders from different castes and give them positions in the party, Modi said, "Caste leaders hold votes which are required for any party for elections. If necessary, give up your positions to accommodate caste leaders."

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/focus-on-bjp-return-to-power-not-on-pm-candidate-modi/1142858/

[Sachin=GOD]

Uddhav stays silent on Modi, says we have many leaders who can be PM

New Delhi: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday chose to remain silent on the prime ministerial aspirants, which also include BJP poll panel chief and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. When asked about Modi after the ASSOCHAM annual meeting, Thackeray wondered if India had any national leader at all. "What this country needs is a strong government and a credible leader. In the current situation there is no leader who comes to mind who can be called the leader of the nation," he said. Shiv Sena is a constituent of BJP-led NDA and Thackeray said the alliance will provide the country with a strong central government. "(BJP chief) Rajnath Singh and I are together, we will give a strong government," said Thackeray. His statement comes just days after Uddhav had defended the Gujarat Chief Minister's "Hindu nationalist" remark, saying JD(U)'s decision to snap ties with the party was "wrong". "Modi made no mistake by saying that he is a Hindu. It was wrong on the part of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to exit NDA on a secular stand after Modi's elevation in BJP," Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray told reporters after inaugurating the renovated office of the party 'Shivalaya' in south Mumbai. "Is it a crime to say that you are a Hindu? Since when it has become wrong in this country to say that you are Hindu"? Uddhav said. The Shiv Sena had in its party mouthpiece in June slammed Modi for claiming that he saved 15,000 Gujaratis in Uttarakhand. The editorial had warned that Modi's saviour act may in fact have adverse publicity and 'boomerang'. Thackeray had later clarified saying that they expected more from Modi since he has been appointed the BJP campaign chief. "We haven't attacked Narendra Modi. But given his new role at the national stage, we have some expectations from him," Uddhav had later said. In fact, the Shiv Sena in its mouthpiece had also raised concerns about state of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). An editorial in Saamna last month emphasised senior BJP leader LK Advani's stand that the NDA needs to find "new friends/allies". The edit also urged the BJP to declare its potential new friends. But things seem to have changed after Modi visited Mumbai in June and met Thackeray at his residence.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/uddhav-stays-silent-on-modi-says-we-have-many-leaders-who-can-be-pm/407879-37-64.html

[Crookbond]

Playing the caste card as well - so much for leader with a difference. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/focus-on-bjp-return-to-power-not-on-pm-candidate-modi/1142858/

Another snippet from the article

He said at least 10,000 mobile phones of each Assembly segments should be regularly fed with BJP's ideologies and "inefficiencies' of the Congress.

This reminds me of at least one other leader from history who had similar traits.

[Sachin=GOD]

National Interest: Lose-lose Shekhar Gupta : Sat Jul 13 2013, 01:08 hrs

Down and almost out, the Congress lays out a 'secular' trap — and the BJP is walking right in PRECISELY at a time for when it had promised a decision-making flourish, the UPA seems missing in action. Some changes have moved, but many others have got stalled. The prime minister hasn't spoken for any of his policies for weeks, and nobody knows for sure where Rahul Gandhi is. Meanwhile, various ministries are fighting among themselves, scuppering reform and FDI increases in their respective areas. Yes, the food security ordinance has been passed and some long-withheld environmental clearances have come. But overall, there is too little coherence to convince you that the UPA is improving its governance report card. Yet, if I said that, in the build-up to the 2014 campaign, the UPA, or rather the Congress, has been the first off the block, will you, to steal the favourite line of our brilliant columnist Surjit Bhalla, tell me I am mad? But the fact is, the Congress has made the first moves in this campaign. It has unveiled a minimalistic strategy. It knows it cannot repeat its 2009 performance. It simply does not have a track record. So what do you do if you know you cannot win? You deny the other side victory. Simply put, I may not be able to win, but I can ensure that neither will you. Then it will be down to post-election arithmetic, a kind of who-cannot-go-with-whom Duckworth-Lewis, when no clear decision is possible. ARMIES call this the strategy of terrain denial. When you know you cannot win, you block your rival's progress and then salvage something from the stalemate. The Congress knows that if they allowed this election to be fought on governance, they would be laughed out. And if they let the opposition set it up on corruption, they would be wiped out. So the Congress has gone right back to trying to convert this into a single-point contest: not to bring themselves back, but to keep Modi out. Surely, secularism is central to our Constitution and society, and there can be no compromise with this. But in simple, political English, what this means is, if I can set up this campaign on the single point, who the Muslims should fear and who they shouldn't, I may be able to deny the NDA, or rather Narendra Modi, power. Talk to the seniormost people in the Congress, and the number they mention, with a gleam in their eyes, is 135-40. If they can get to that, and somehow keep the BJP (with its essential allies, the Shiv Sena and Shiromani Akali Dal) within 165, they will be much better placed to form some kind of a coalition eventually. Because the number of those who cannot go with Modi will always be higher than those who can. In fact, Modi's presence in front may even give some of the regional and left parties a high moral excuse to bury their differences with arch enemies, just to keep him out. There is another key number: to somehow keep the BJP below 25 in Uttar Pradesh. India's electoral history tells you that for an anti-Congress combination to come to power, it has to sweep the entire Hindi heartland (1977, '89, '98-'99). That is because the largest of these parties, the BJP and the Lohiaite-Mandalite groups, are not even in the contest in the south and most of the east. With Nitish Kumar in the bag, the Congress believes this minimalistic approach is working. They have denied Bihar to Modi. Now if only they could hold him back in Uttar Pradesh. He can then sweep Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and the big urban centres. It will not be enough. The departure of Nitish has also encouraged them to believe that many of the other unhitched players, Naveen Patnaik and Jaganmohan Reddy in particular, may also find it tough to support the NDA. And if the campaign does get fought predominantly on identity, you may even achieve an impossibility, like both Mamata and the Left supporting a secular combination from outside, just to keep Modi away. Modi's arrival, therefore, has changed, redefined and impacted the Congress strategy much before it has reflected in his own party's. The Congress has now set a trap for the BJP. The heavy campaign on the Ishrat Jahan case, at the supremely cynical price of unravelling the Intelligence Bureau, is only the most visible example of this. AND the BJP, for now, has walked straight into the trap. Its first false move was not the elevation of Modi: that was supposed to work differently, as he has been repositioning himself for three years now as a much-reformed nationalist champion of economic growth. Then, he and his party sent Amit Shah to Uttar Pradesh. Just what were they smoking, drinking, eating, thinking, when they did so? Everybody has seen this move as the BJP following a strategy of polarisation. And Amit Shah, too much of a faithful to suppress his basic instinct, walked right to the deepest end of that trap with his initial statements in Lucknow, and then the visit to Ayodhya. Now, his party president can say a million times that Ram Temple is not an election issue. But the damage is done. Or, as they'd say in the heartland, samajhne waale samajh gaye.... Frankly, when you talk to Modi and his seniormost BJP supporters, they say they know that mere polarisation will not work for them. That the Modi they want to project in 2014 should look and sound nothing like the Modi of 2002. But politics is about faces and masks, or mukhautas. So if the Modi of 2014 is represented by Amit Shah, you do not leave much to debate on who is the face and who the mask. This is precisely what the Congress had been waiting for. An election fought on performance, growth, governance and corruption would simply devastate them. A polarised campaign gives them hope. Building a temple, in any case, does not have the same oomph as destroying a mosque. Unless Modi and the BJP make a course correction now, this is the way this campaign is headed. It will not work for them. They have to make a course-correction and ensure no more Amit Shahs poke their fingers in the eye of middle India. Otherwise, you can safely predict our most negative election campaign ever. An election fought on identity will be so unfair to Muslims, so contemptuous of Hindus, and so insulting to such a resurgent, young and aspirational India. It will also give the Congress a chance.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-loselose/1141175/0

[asterix]

^ :hatsoff:

[The Outsider]

^ All political commentators with a lot of experience of Indian politics are making the same essential point based on logic and thought. I don't get how Modi supporters are not able to see something so obvious and are dreaming of Modi leading the BJP+SS+SAD to 200 seats and coming to power with Modi at the helm. If BJP had picked someone like Swaraj, Jaitley, or Advani they would have never lost JD-U and possibly gained BJD, Mamta, and Reddy. In that scenario, Congress was already going out. With this Modi drama, they've injected life in an election which would have been a foregone conclusion otherwise.

[adi B]

shekhar gupta actually making some sense and valid points :omg:

[seedhi]

^ All political commentators with a lot of experience of Indian politics are making the same essential point based on logic and thought. I don't get how Modi supporters are not able to see something so obvious and are dreaming of Modi leading the BJP+SS+SAD to 200 seats and coming to power with Modi at the helm. If BJP had picked someone like Swaraj, Jaitley, or Advani they would have never lost JD-U and possibly gained BJD, Mamta, and Reddy. In that scenario, Congress was already going out. With this Modi drama, they've injected life in an election which would have been a foregone conclusion otherwise.

They did try Advani in 2009 when the also had JD(U) with them. Didn't work. As someone rightly said, the hallmark of foolishness is to try the same thing again and hope for a different result.

[adi B]

The Congress knows that if they allowed this election to be fought on governance, they would be laughed out. And if they let the opposition set it up on corruption, they would be wiped out. So the Congress has gone right back to trying to convert this into a single-point contest: not to bring themselves back, but to keep Modi out. Surely, secularism is central to our Constitution and society, and there can be no compromise with this. But in simple, political English, what this means is, if I can set up this campaign on the single point, who the Muslims should fear and who they shouldn't, I may be able to deny the NDA, or rather Narendra Modi, power

nailed it..is he an icf member :ohmy: ,almost this whole post resembles with some of our icf junta sentiments

[seedhi]

Quite frankly, what the Congress is trying to do at the national level is exactly what they have done in Gujarat - and Narendra Modi emerged more and more strong out of it.

[The Outsider]

They did try Advani in 2009 when the also had JD(U) with them. Didn't work. As someone rightly said, the hallmark of foolishness is to try the same thing again and hope for a different result.

2009 was a completely different scenario - the level of frustration with the government is on a completely different scale today.

nailed it..is he an icf member :ohmy: ' date='almost this whole post resembles with some of our icf junta sentiments[/quote'] Well, if you read most experienced political analysts they are making essentially the same point - it was BJP's election to lose and with Modi's elevation they have likely lost it.

[Sachin=GOD]

^ All political commentators with a lot of experience of Indian politics are making the same essential point based on logic and thought. I don't get how Modi supporters are not able to see something so obvious and are dreaming of Modi leading the BJP+SS+SAD to 200 seats and coming to power with Modi at the helm. If BJP had picked someone like Swaraj, Jaitley, or Advani they would have never lost JD-U and possibly gained BJD, Mamta, and Reddy. In that scenario, Congress was already going out. With this Modi drama, they've injected life in an election which would have been a foregone conclusion otherwise.

well, they had to put Modi in some important post because for a few months now it has been very clear that as far as the ground level karyakartas are concerned, Modi is more popular than any other BJP leader currently. What BJP should have done is to make Modi the Election Committee Chief and then announce that Modi is not and will not be the PM candidate (they could have easily gone into the elections under collective leadership - seeing that they have at least 3 or 4 leaders who can easily be the PM candidate). This way the karyakartas would have been satisfied that Modi is in charge of elections while the current/potential allies would have been satisfied that Modi will not be the PM candidate. But Modi's PR machinery seems to have done a stunning job of marketing this guy as the savior of the party to such an extent that the party it seems, has decided to show the middle finger to allies and go with Modi alone. IMO there are very high chances of this strategy ending in absolute disaster for the BJP and more importantly, for India.

They did try Advani in 2009 when the also had JD(U) with them. Didn't work. As someone rightly said, the hallmark of foolishness is to try the same thing again and hope for a different result.

this time all major regional parties had sensed that with such extreme levels of blatant corruption/inflation/crime etc, Congress's chances were pretty bad so they could have joined NDA but then Modi became the leader and suddenly that changed all the equations to such an extent that the existing NDA itself was broken with JDU leaving and there's no chance of any major party joining before the elections.