Rubbishing speculations that he was involved in a leadership tussle in the Bharatiya Janata Party, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday asserted that L K Advani will be the prime minister after the next Lok Sabha elections.
"After the Lok Sabha elections, BJP will come to power and L K Advani will be the prime minister," Modi said while addressing a gathering in Halol town.
Without naming anybody, Modi accused a tolki (a mocking reference to a group of people) sitting in Delhi for deliberately raising the controversy on the issue of BJP's prime-ministerial candidate, to divert attention from the success of the Vibrant Gujarat global investors summit.
"After the development work we have undertaken in Gujarat, Delhi now recognises that a BJP government can come to power at the Centre after the upcoming elections. Our leader L K Advani will be the prime minister and under his leadership even the country will witness rapid growth like Gujarat," Modi said.
The BJP has projected Advani as its prime ministerial candidate. However, Modi's praise as prime ministerial material by industry stalwarts including Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal, on the sidelines of investors' summit in Ahmedabad, recently led to a flutter in the BJP with the saffron party terming it as a compliment to the party's senior leaders and its chief ministers.
