Nirmala Seetharaman, BJP National Spokesperson
Intention was not to mislead
A contrived outpouring of rage from the Congress on a candid admission in an affidavit by the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, was there for all to see. It did not surprise us in the BJP, as by now, it is well known that the ruling Congress is running out of steam in the run-up to the elections.
Mr Modi, born into a tradition-bound, not-so-well-off family, had an arranged marriage with a young woman when both of them were in their teens. However, wanting to find a role for himself in the service of the nation, Mr Modi left his family.
Much later, by the lady’s own admission, Mr Modi had exhorted her to study, work and serve the people. The lady and both their families had reconciled to the marriage that wasn’t! On this matter, the lady, when interviewed a few years ago, responded with great dignity. As adults, they did not try to make their marriage void, legally.
Mr Modi contested four elections before filing his nomination for the Lok Sabha elections 2014. Respecting the right to privacy of the lady concerned, in all earlier affidavits, Mr Modi left the spouse column blank. They were leading their lives separately in every sense of the word. Legally, leaving the column blank, till before September 2013, was acceptable. Even otherwise, there was no claim to a marriage either.
After September 2013, the law requires every column, not just the one about the spouse, to be filled in with appropriate information. Or else, it is required to be filled in with ‘Not Applicable’ or ‘Not Known’. The larger objective of the column on spouse, as I understand, is more to establish the financial status of the person income, property etc.
In Mr Modi’s case, the name should not matter any way, because they had never lived together, ever. However, as said earlier, since they hadn’t made the marriage void in law, he stated her name in the column meant for spouse. The intention now and earlier was not to mislead or to say any untruth. This is all there is to the affidavit.
Disgracefully, the Congress made an all-out personal attack. It was completely misplaced. If only their vice-president, their general secretary and all other minions did their home-work, they would not have had to shamefully retreat.
Kalwakuntla Kavitha, TRS leader
Owes women an apology
People emulate leaders, so leaders should live their lives with high levels of integrity. Having hidden the fact that he has been married for so many years, Mr Modi has let down the people he wishes to serve and must apologise to the women of the country. He is not only accountable to himself but to everyone in this country who he aspires to serve as a leader.
People would definitely like to know the reasons for keeping this a secret for so many years. I believe that any person contesting in any election should be prepared to have his or her entire life in the public domain. One needs to be transparent about it, particularly if one is contesting for the country’s top leadership position.
In this regard, Mr Modi has discounted the fact that he is accountable to the people of India by hiding such a basic fact of his life. He hasn’t mentioned his wife in all the earlier elections too. He has misguided the people of India and more particularly of Gujarat where he has held the Chief Minister’s post.
If he aspires to be the Prime Minister tomorrow, he needs to be transparent on this. At least he has come out clean on the issue by mentioning his wife’s name now, but it does not mean that all his previous mistakes can be forgiven.
He has to come clean on this by publicly apologising to the women of India, who he has deeply hurt by not recognising his own wife. His behaviour has hurt the sentiments of women. Particularly since Mr Modi has been a very vocal leader, he must apologise to the women for hiding such a crucial aspect of his life from the people.
By not being transparent about his marriage, he has given scope to people to raise doubts over his integrity. We are a country where women are denied basic rights and with such crucial information being hidden, it becomes questionable whether womens’ rights can be protected by him.
Although we do not want to know the reasons behind his personal equation with his wife or what went wrong between them out of respect for their privacy, everyone needs to know why it was hidden and we would definitely like to know if Modi took care of issues like alimony and whether his wife is taken care of and other issues concerning the woman’s basic rights.
