Congress lawmaker Darda praises controversial Narendra Modi

Ahmedabad, July 29 (ANI): Congress Party lawmaker Vijay Jawaharlal Darda, raised eyebrows on Sunday, when he praised Gujarat Chief Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi.

Darda, who was speaking on the occasion of a sermon by celebrated Jain ascetic Tarun Sagar in Gujarat's Ahmedabad city, called Modi a 'lion'.

In the light of the recent expulsion of Shahid Siddiqui, a journalist and former lawmaker of the regional Samajwadi Party (SP) for interviewing Modi, Modi made a tongue-in-cheek quip about the risk Darda had taken by praising one of the most controversial leaders of the Congress party's federal arch-rival BJP.

"Today (Darda) has called Modi a lion, so people are saying that Modi will sleep well tonight. But that is not the case. Today, I will lose what little sleep I have. I worry that there could be a breaking news item tomorrow, saying that the Congress high command has sent Vijay Darda a notice, because for a Congress lawmaker to go and praise Modi in an election year is the highest form of indiscipline, and therefore, he is to be expelled," he said.

Darda, however, defended his statement, saying that as a guest in Modi's province, he was bound by tradition to pay his respects to his host.

"This stage belongs to Tarun Sagar Ji, and is not a stage for politics of any kind. We term people of determination and ambition as lions. It does mean a predator. My tradition says that I when I enter a state or a house, I must respect my host," Darda said.

Viewed as a communally divisive leader, Modi draws extreme reactions from political rivals as well as fellow BJP members on the nature of his leadership and his speculated ambition to rise to federal politics, after having led Gujarat for over a decade.

The Samajwadi Party disowned Siddiqui after he interviewed western India's Gujarat state chief minister Narendra Modi, which he had taken for his Urdu paper, 'Nai Duniya' (New World).

Modi raised hackles when he refused to apologise for the Gujarat riots on the contention that it would be an acknowledgement of his complicity.

More than a thousand people, most of them Muslims, were hacked, beaten or burned to death in Gujarat after a suspected Muslim mob burnt alive 59 Hindu activists and pilgrims inside a train in February 2002 at Godhra town.

In recent times, Modi has sought to soften the 'hardliner' tag, initiating programmes for 'Sadbhavna' (harmony), in an effort to reach out to a larger cross section of the electorate. (ANI)