Arun Lakshman By

Express News Service

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Narendra Modi will not be the Prime Minister again, said Shatrughan Sinha, BJP MP and former union minister. He was speaking exclusively to Express here on Monday.

“At present, it is a one-man show and ‘two-men army’ for the BJP and the central government, with Modi and Amit Shah controlling each and every aspect of governance,” said the senior leader. According to him, Modi is a “picture of arrogance, arrogance and more arrogance.”

“The BJP and the NDA government at the Centre have totally forgotten the farmers, who are the base of the country, and this is the reason for the 5-0 drubbing in the recent state Assembly elections. Modi and BJP have lost their connect with the masses and this will lead to heavy backlash in the coming general elections,” he said.

He reminisced that he was indoctrinated into social life by the late doyen of Indian journalism Ramnath Goenka and that he was a regular at the Express Towers in Bombay even during his heydays as superstar. He said that it was his association with Ramnath Goenka, Nanaji Deshmukh and Jayaprakash Narayanan that took him to Vajpayee and Advani, ultimately paving the way for his political entry.

Sinha, fondly known as the Shotgun in Bollywood, said the demonetisation and the half-baked, hush-bush GST have spoiled the country and Narendra Modi did not consult anyone until it was implemented. He said that the GST amendments, which Jaitley is doing now, could have done much earlier and already 360 GST amendments have been brought out. According to him, Narendra Modi has grown in stature above the RSS.



Ramesh Chennithala with Shatrughan Sinha at the book release of Shashi Tharoor's 'Paradoxical Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his India' at YMCA hall in Thiruvananthapuram. (Photo | BP Deepu)

According to him, during the last general elections, Narendra Modi did try to shift him from Patna citing certain political reasons, but he stuck on to Patna and the result was his majority, which is the highest in the country, followed by Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.

He said that in the days to come there will be dissenting voices coming out in the open from the BJP. According to him, the chances of the party returning to power are remote. “The BJP, which was a highly democratic party during the period of Vajpayee and Advani, has ceased to become one since Modi and Amit Shah came to the forefront. L K Advani, Murali Manohar Joshi, Arun Shourie, and Yashwant Sinha were sidelined by Modi. This has hurt all the senior leaders of the party,” he said.

Asked whether he will leave the BJP, he said it is for the party to decide on that and he will never leave on his own. Sinha said that the losses in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh is a clear indicator and writing on the wall for the BJP. “The Congress is doing well under Rahul Gandhi and in a year after assuming the post of party president, he has done extremely well in clinching three states for the party from the BJP,” he said.

‘Modi failed to convince nation on pitfalls of GST’

Senior BJP leader and MP from Patna Shatrughan Sinha released the new book of Shashi Tharoor MP ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and his India’ here at the YMCA Hall on Monday. The noted actor said the nation is his first priority and party and individual comes only after that. He said the Prime Minister has failed to convince the people of the country on the pitfalls of GST and that the demonetisation has taken away the hard-earned money of Indian housewives which cannot be pardoned.

The actor-turned-politician said he was against the one-man show and two-men army, without directly referring to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. In an indirect reference to Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani, Sinha said if an advocate can speak for hours on the economy of the country and a TV actor become the HRD minister, then he can speak on GST and demonetisation.

Shashi Tharoor, who is a Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram and the author of the book, said the maximum number of cow vigilantism cases has taken place in the country during the rule of Narendra Modi and that 97 per cent of the total of the cow-related attacks has taken place during this period. Tharoor said Modi who was speaking regularly on decentralisation of administration has been controlling the whole administration from the Prime Minister’s office and with this all the files are pending.

Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala, in his inaugural speech, said Modi and Godse were powered by the same ideology and that a writer like Shashi Tharoor has exposed Modi.