The Congress of the country’s largest opposition party and such opposition leaders, who once belonged to the BJP, are creating a new debate. This debate is about Atal Bihari Vajpayee vs Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi visited Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s samadhi on Monday, leaving BJP leaders baffled. He never imagined that a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family would ever visit a BJP leader’s samadhi to pay homage. The BJP is still figuring out its meaning and in the meantime, Nitish Kumar and Yashwant Sinha targeted Narendra Modi’s government at the center by adopting the name Vajpayee.
Yashwant Sinha wrote an article in an English newspaper questioning this government’s policy of making noise and comparing it to Vajpayee Raj. In Vajpayee’s government, Yashwant Sinha was the minister of two important ministries such as finance and foreign affairs. On the noise made by the government about the G-20 presidency, he said that he had become G-20 chairman in 1999 when he was foreign minister, and at the same time India was also given the chairmanship of the Development Committee of the World Bank. But then it was not publicized. He has written that in the government of Vajpayee, all people were silently engaged in development work. Now the work is getting less and there is more crying and crying.
Similarly, on the birthday of Atal Bihari Vajpayee on December 25, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar remembered him with great affection and respect and said that the country had developed at a very rapid pace during Vajpayee’s reign. He also said that Vajpayee gave him responsibility over three key ministries and that all development project proposals he sent to the prime minister were immediately approved. Please note that Nitish Kumar was the Minister of Agriculture, Road Transport and Railways in the Vajpayee government. Nitish also remembered Vajpayee’s contribution to the development of Bihar. Not only this, a senior leader of BJP also supported Nitish and said that more work was being done in Vajpayee government be it to set up NTPC project or any other project in Bihar floods. So this is a new discussion. I don’t know if it’s very coordinated or not, but it’s going to be a narrative discussion. Keep in mind that Prime Minister Modi and all the ministers in his government are claiming that what hasn’t happened in 70 years is happening now. Six years of Vajpayee reign are also included in those 70 years. The opposition now compares those six years to Modi’s eight years, claiming that more development work has been done in the country in the six years of Vajpayee’s rule and that India’s name has also increased in the world.