A familiar defender of Narendra Modi and the BJP on local news channels has turned rebellious, tweeting “two Gujarati thugs are fooling the Hindi heartland”. Gujarat is the home state of the Prime Minister and party president Amit Shah.
I.P. Singh, who was removed as state BJP spokesperson last month — apparently without any reason being cited — has further asked: “Have we elected a Prime Minister or a publicity minister?”
He has added that it’s becoming impossible to speak for “someone who wears a Rs 10-lakh suit and plans to address 400 rallies, each costing Rs 100 crore, and then calls himself poor”.
Modi had donned an expensive suit monogrammed with his name during a meeting with then US President Barack Obama in 2015.
Singh has prefixed “usooldar” (idealist) to his Twitter handle @ipsinghbjp in reaction to Modi’s “Main Bhi Chowkidar” (I am a watchman too) campaign that has prompted many BJP heavyweights to add “chowkidar” to their names.
One of Singh’s tweets from the past two days, all posted in Hindi, says: “Does it look good that the Prime Minister of our country sells T-shirts and tea through his official Twitter account?”
Modi claims he used to sell tea as a child. On Sunday, the Prime Minister had pasted, below one of his own tweets, a tweet from @namomerchandise promoting Main Bhi Chowkidar T-shirts and asked: “Have you ordered yours?”
One of Singh’s tweets on Monday read: “I am an idealist from a Kshatriya family. Two Gujarati thugs are fooling the Hindi heartland, Hindi-speaking people for the last five years. And we are silent.”
Singh added: “Our Uttar Pradesh is six times bigger than Gujarat and our economy is worth Rs 5 lakh core. What will Gujarat consume and what will it spend on development with Rs 1.15 lakh crore?”
A friend suggested that Singh may have been comparing the two states’ annual budgets. Uttar Pradesh had a budget of Rs 4.84 lakh crore for 2018-19, and Gujarat one of Rs 1.84 lakh crore. Uttar Pradesh has a population just over three times Gujarat’s according to the 2011 census, and an area that is 1.25 times Gujarat’s.
Singh has also slammed Union home minister Rajnath Singh, tweeting: “You have not brought about any development in Lucknow (Rajnath’s constituency). Nitin Gadkariji (highways minister) got the 5km ring road built. “You didn’t develop the village (in Chandauli district) where you were born and brought up. You forgot it. The people here know everything.”
Singh has in another tweet welcomed Samajwadi Partychief Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to contest the Lok Sabha election from Azamgarh, and offered his house in Azamgarh to Akhilesh as his election office.
No BJP leader in Lucknow was willing to comment on Singh’s tweets. Vidyasagar Sonkar, a state BJP general secretary, issued a media release at 2.44pm saying Singh had been suspended from the party for six years.
No reason was cited.
Singh told reporters he had not been informed about the suspension.
