BJP leaders on Monday added “Modi ka parivar” (Modi’s family) to their social media profiles, reacting to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s jibe directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for having “no family” at a public rally of the INDIA bloc in Patna.
Mr. Yadav had made the remarks while referencing Mr. Modi’s attacks on dynastic politics, asking why the PM did not have a family.
Union Ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Nirmala Sitharaman, and BJP chief J.P. Nadda were joined by party members from across the country in declaring themselves “Modi ka parivar “ on their social media accounts, as the ruling party launched a sharp counterattack on the Opposition. Many supporters of Mr. Modi on social media also made the same change on their pages.
BJP MP and spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi traced this as a response to the Opposition parties which, he said, “have been launching personal attacks against Modi by making such ‘petty’ remarks against him for the past 16-17 years”.
“In that series, yesterday (Sunday), at a rally in Patna, once again such petty remarks were made against Prime Minister Modi by Lalu Prasad Yadav in the presence of INDIA alliance leaders. This is sad and painful,” Mr. Trivedi said at a press conference at the BJP headquarters here.
“He (Yadav) has talked about Modi’s family. I want to remind [Yadav] that for Prime Minister Modi, the entire country is his family,” he added.
The BJP’s move in support of Mr. Modi in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections is reminiscent of a similar campaign the party had mounted prior to the 2019 General Election with the “main bhi chowkidar” (‘I too am a watchman’) addition to their names to take on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s “chowkidar chor hai” (‘the watchman is a thief’) dig at Mr. Modi. The BJP had, in organising “chai pe charcha” (debates over a cup of tea), events in 2014, when Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had raised the subject of Mr. Modi’s origins as a tea seller, also turned such personal attacks into narrative themes for its poll campaign.
Mr. Modi, for his part, on Monday asserted the same line, of the entire country being his family, at a rally in Adilabad in Telangana, where he said that the “140 crore people of India are my family”. It was soon after the rally that BJP leaders added the “Modi ka parivar” tag to their profiles.
Mr. Modi also kept up his attack on “dynastic parties” in the country, saying they may have different faces, but “jhoot aur loot” (lies and loot) was their “common character”.
