Modi parochial, hints Sinha

BJP leader Yashwant Sinha made a veiled criticism of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Thursday over reports of his rescuing Gujaratis in Uttarakhand, saying a "national leader" should be concerned about everyone and not just people from his state.

Sinha, an MP from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, told TimesNow news channel that one should not introduce parochialism in the rescue of people stranded after a natural disaster.

"If one is a national leader, then he should be concerned about everyone from any part of the country," Sinha said in an apparent dig at Modi.

He said if he was rescuing a person from Jharkhand and next to him was a Bengali or a person from another state, he would not leave him to his fate.

Sinha also made an apparent reference to the widely reported scuffle between MPs of the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party Tuesday at Dehradun over ferrying pilgrims from Uttarakhand.

"I feel diminished as a person belonging to the political class that this kind of unseemly behaviour should be adopted and this kind of unseemly scenes should take place specially in Uttarakhand," he said. "This is most unfortunate."

Sinha urged politicians to leave relief to those who are actually in charge.

"We should not introduce parochialism that the Andhra people are going and rescuing Andhra people and some other state chief minister is going and rescuing people from that state," he said.

Asked if he was talking about the Gujarat chief minister, Sinha said he was talking about everyone.

BJP president Rajnath Singh said Tuesday that Modi had made no statement about rescuing 15,000 Gujaratis from flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.