AHMEDABAD: The event lived up to its billing. The expected face-off at the rare instance of Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi sharing the dais at the Sardar Patel memorial inauguration here might have petered out as yet another occasion for mouthing platitudes but for Modi’s last minute dig at Jawaharlal Nehru. “There will always be the regret in every Indian that Sardar saheb was not our first PM. Had it been so, India’s destiny would have been different,” he said. “He united the country and that unity is under threat today.”

Immediately the atmosphere became electric. For, his criticism of the Nehru-Gandhi family legacy was lost on none. Modi gave an early glint of his combative mood by saying that the PM first chose to go to the Congress headquarters instead of coming to the Patel memorial, but then he eased up by thanking Manmohan Singh for some 200 awards given to the Gujarat government for different achievements.

Speaking after him, Singh could hardly ignore Modi’s barb, which apart from suggesting that the second-best man (Nehru) got the top job as PM, was also Modi’s attempt to usurp the Patel legacy by championing his cause. The rare slogan – “Desh ka neta kaisa ho, Manmohan Singh jaisa ho” – from the assembled crowd must have strengthened the PM’s resolve to set the record straight.

“Sardar Patel was a secular leader. And I am proud to be a member of a political party with which he was associated,” Singh began. “He was secular to the core. He had deep faith in the integrity and unity of India. He believed that the whole country was a village and people of all communities were his relatives and friends.”

Warming up, Singh added: “What was common between Nehru, Patel and Azad was their secular and liberal attitude. All of them respected thoughts and ideas that were different from theirs’. That quality is rare these days.” In whom he didn’t state, but that was obvious to the gathering. To counter the suggestion that Patel got a raw deal from Nehru, Singh quoted Patel as writing, “It was my privilege to give my advice to Pandit Nehru on government and organizational matters.”

The battle for Sardar Patel's legacy is likely to continue this week with Modi scheduled to announce the erection of the world’s tallest statue – that of Patel – on October 31, Patel’s birth anniversary, at a cost of Rs 2,500 crore, near the Sardar Sarovar dam. Union ministers Jairam Ramesh and Anand Sharma have declined to attend the ceremony which will be attended by nearly 700 BJP MPs and MLAs from across the country.

The war of words continued after the function with Modi tweeting later, “Unfortunately, PM refused to give time to discuss Gujarat's key issues but preferred to visit Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan, the state Congress office.”