Amid the hype over his prime ministerial ambitions, Chief Minister Narendra Modi now says he has his people’s mandate till 2017 to serve Gujarat.
When a student asked him at a Teacher’s Day function in Gandhinagar on Thursday if he would come to interact with them after becoming the Prime Minister in 2014, Mr. Modi said he never saw, “such dreams, nor am I going to see them. I have a mandate of serving the people of Gujarat till 2017.”
He declared: “Those who dream of becoming something end up destroying themselves. One should not dream of becoming something, but one should dream of doing something.”
His comments come in the midst of a call for a Gujarat bandh on Friday by the Congress that has been baying for his blood after the stinging resignation letter of suspended IPS officer D.G. Vanzara as well as a sting operation allegedly involving two BJP MPs trying to influence the investigation in the Tulsiram Prajapati fake encounter case.
The students asked Mr. Modi a variety of questions like where he learnt yoga and how to convey him birthday wishes. A student, Ina Solanki, from Vadodara wanted to know how frequently he got angry and how did he sort it out. He replied, “I don't get angry but many times I feel pain. It is extremely painful when people older to me touch my feet.”
To a question as to what spurred the idea in him to plan to build a “statue of unity” of Sardar Patel in Gujarat, he said India had nothing to boast of ever since Independence while all countries had something to that effect. Sardar Patel unified the country and this was to eulogise his efforts.
Mr. Modi was sharing the dais with Governor Kamala Beniwal for the first time after a fresh issue erupted between them following the latter’s returning the new Gujarat Lokayukta Bill as “a mockery of judicial process”.