Pointing out that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi never said Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s daughter, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, is like his daughter, his office on Friday released the tape of his complete interview to DD News.
The move comes after the row over Modi’s interview to the public broadcaster intensified, with Sonia Gandhi’s political aide Ahmed Patel refuting BJP’s prime ministerial candidate’s claims (as shown in the interview) of their alleged closeness as “baseless” and “a complete lie”.
Moreover, DD News director general S M Khan, in a statement, said there was no “deliberate editing or omission of any portion of the interview. Whatever editing was done was for technical reasons and during post production”.
In the released tape, Modi is seen saying he would not be angry even if Priyanka hurled a hundred curses at him.
“Any daughter will do everything for her brother and mother’s victory. A daughter is after all a daughter; if she does not work for her mother, whom will she do it for? It is her right to work for her mother, to work for her brother. If she hurls 10 more curses, then too a daughter is a daughter and as a daughter, whatever she does, I won’t be angry at her,” Modi said in the interview to DD News.
On Thursday, Priyanka reacted to news reports of Modi describing her as being “like his daughter” with a curt “I am the daughter of late Rajiv Gandhi who sacrificed his life for the country”.
In the full interview tape, Modi is also seen saying: “Ahmedbhai has been one of my very good friends in the Congress. He is not so now. Perhaps he has some difficulty now, and avoids me. He does not even take my phone calls. I used to go to his residence to dine with him. It was a good friendship and I believe that personal friendship should remain.”
Modi even claimed that “we never used to call him Ahmedbhai. For years, we used to call him Babubhai. This is not known outside. For us, Ahmedbhai was Babubhai. But in public life, he has to be given respect. It will not look good if I call him Babubhai.”
In response, Patel said Modi’s “ridiculous” claims of sharing friendship were a “political stunt” to create “confusion” in the midst of elections. He also offered to quit public life if there was any proof of him taking favours from the Gujarat chief minister.
“How would Modi be able to befriend me when he has never struck friendship within his own party?” he asked.
He also said he never had any meeting with Modi either in his office or at his residence, but added that the latter had come to his place for lunch in the eighties when he was BJP general secretary.
“Besides that, I never had any one-on-one meeting with Modi before or after the communal riots in Gujarat in 2002,” he emphasised.
The BJP too alleged that the interview was “censored” following government “pressure”. BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad insisted Modi had never said Priyanka Gandhi was like his daughter and the interview aired by the public broadcaster was deliberately “distorted”, and hoped for a probe to find out under whose influence the content of the interview was edited.
Meanwhile, Doordarshan news anchor Ashok Srivastav, who interviewed Modi, tweeted, “I never wanted to create a storm. I just tried to do my job as a professional journalist.”
His earlier tweets said, “Original interview was 56 minutes, but I got a half an hour chunk. We telecast 34 minutes. Professionally, I feel we should have telecast the full version. I also feel that the important portion shouldn’t be edited. But I am not the final authority.”