Former Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said here on Saturday his nomination as the candidate for Vice-President was a conscious decision taken by the BJP high command, which felt that south India should be given representation having made a person from the north the President.
He denied that the BJP had effectively sidelined him and said he had no regrets about it but felt emotional as his long, active association with the BJP, which he served since the Jan Sangh days, was coming to an end.
“I broke down at that moment and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taken aback as I lost control. Nevertheless, I consented to it as per their wishes,” he said.
Another thing Mr. Naidu wanted was to be in the party till Mr. Modi became the PM for the second time in 2019 and see the party emerge stronger under the stewardship of Amit Shah. Besides, he expressed his desire to watch Jammu and Kashmir prosper as an integral part of India and the inter-linking of rivers to take shape. Addressing a gathering of political representatives and the city’s elite who felicitated him on his nomination, Mr. Venkaiah Naidu acknowledged that in the event of becoming the Vice-President, he would not have the kind of freedom he enjoyed when he was President of the BJP for 3 ½ years and general secretary for seven years and served it in other capacities in the subsequent years. He also had the satisfaction of serving the people as the Union Minister to which position he rose through hard work under the tutelage of A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, both of whom nurtured his talent and encouraged him to take up larger responsibilities.
He recalled that there were several instances when he cherished his role in party positions more than he did in the government.
Mr. Naidu said India needed Mr. Modi’s leadership and the firmness with which he tackled problems that stifled the country’s growth. “It is not that nothing happened under the previous dispensations [Congress] but India would have certainly been much stronger had it been given the right direction,” he observed. Mr. Naidu said he would continue to lend his advice and help Andhra Pradesh in all possible ways in overcoming the obstacles that bifurcation had thrown in its path. He hoped that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu would take the State forward in spite of some impediments.
