US not planning to invite Narendra Modi

Ahmedabad: The consul general of the US Paul Folmsbee said on the opening day of the Vibrant Gujarat 2011 Summit that there are no plans to call Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to the country.

Folmsbee’s remarks have once again made it clear that Modi’s US Visa dream would remain unfulfilled even the coming days, though the US Embassy for the first time formally participated in the Gujarat government’s summit, Folmsbee categorically denied any plans to invite Modi to the US for any purpose.

When asked whether the team from US Consulate would be meeting the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and whether there are any plans to allow Modi a US Visa, which has been denied to him considering the 2002 post-Godhra carnage and its implications, he said, “Well, we have been organising such events in USA, we don’t intend to call the Gujarat CM to the US and we have not thought

Narendra Modi not forgiven: Deoband chief clarifies

Under pressure from community leaders, Maulana Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi, the newly elected chief of Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband, on Sunday retracted his earlier remarks on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, saying the latter was not forgiven for the 2002 riots and persecution of Muslims.

“Modi will not be forgiven by anyone. Even Allah will not forgive him,” said Vastanvi.

“I cannot say that [his earlier remarks]. People cannot forgive him for what happened eight years ago,” he said.

Vastanvi said the media had misinterpreted and distorted his remarks on Modi and Gujarat and issued a public apology.

According to earlier media reports, Vastanvi had said majority of Muslims in Gujarat are happy and prospering and asked members of the community to leave behind Godhra riots and move on.

He was quoted in media saying “I believe that most of the Muslims in Gujarat are prospering.”

“Excluding a few, who are embroiled in one case or the other, most of them are happy with their work. Their financial condition is also good,”he was quoted in an interview.

He had reportedly said that Modi was elected by the masses and as such he cannot give any opinion on him.

Fans call Narendra Modi as Messiah

- Narendra Modi was once a tea vendor, and his

status gradually raised to the Chief Minister ship. His fans call him a messiah. The opponents allege that he is a power hungry Machiavelli. Some say he has both the qualities.

What the truth is ? Is Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi a Messiah or Machiavelli?

In the decades he has spent in Indian politics, Modi has transformed himself from the quiet pracharak (propagandist) of the Hindu right to perhaps the most talked about chief minister in the country.

Today, he is single-handedly spearheading the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) aggressive campaign to retain power in Gujarat after six tumultuous years in office during which the terrible anti-Muslim violence of 2002 left over a thousand people dead.

Since then Modi has become a hate figure for rights groups, secularists and large sections of the political establishment. The US has even denied him visa. But the 57-year-old politician has a huge following, in Gujarat and elsewhere.

If he does lead the BJP to victory in the assembly elections December 11 and 16 , he would emerge as the strongest leader in the country's main opposition party - and the electoral win will cast a shadow on national politics.

And if he loses, he will have only himself to blame - and his seeming inability to carry his colleagues with him.

Social scientist Ghanshyam Shah told IANS: "This election is going to revolve around Modi. Gujarat has never seen a dominant personality like him in independent India."

For this man from north Gujarat, life began from running a tea canteen at Ahmedabad's teeming bus terminus.

Once he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), Modi worked as a pracharak in the Kangra region of Himachal Pradesh where people remember him as a docile and humble man, an image contrary to his present one.

During Modi's tenure in New Delhi as the BJP's national spokesman in the late 1990s, he went to the US for a three-month course on public relations and image management. This apparently now helps him to get the publicity he desires.

Even his opponents admit that he is a master of publicity and propaganda, one who can turn any situation to his advantage. He seems to prove it almost every day.

Said one from his media management circuit: "He knows what to say when. Even on most controversial issues, when facts are not in his favor, he turns the situation to his benefit. He also knows when to create controversies and how to draw maximum mileage out of them."