Rajnath dares opposition to name its prime ministerial candidate

Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Rajnath Singh Tuesday dared the opposition to name its prime ministerial candidate if it was sure of victory in the Lok Sabha polls, even as he asserted that his party will win more seats than it did in 2014.

With only the last phase of the polls to go for 59 seats, he asked the opposition to not play "hide and seek" with people by not announcing who is its leader. He said voters should not be kept in the dark in a healthy democracy.

At a press conference at the BJP headquarters, Singh claimed that a two-thirds majority for the ruling NDA cannot be ruled out as the hope and expectation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2014 polls had turned into confidence and belief this time.

The BJP in 2014 had won its maiden majority by winning 282 of 543 Lok Sabha seats.

The former party president also seized on Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's justification for his "neech aadmi" jibe against Modi, saying that no Indian prime minister has been "abused" as much as him, and asked the Congress to respond on its leader's comments.

The Congress had suspended Aiyar after his personal attack Modi, he noted, but the opposition party revoked his suspension later.

Noting that the Congress and other opposition parties have been claiming that they will form the government after the polls, he said, "2014 was about Modi versus Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. In 2019, it is Modi versus who? That is unknown."