People will get Congress-free India in 2014: Modi

New Delhi, April 7 (IANS) The BJP will set the agenda for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, emerge victorious and the people will get a “Congress-free India”, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday.

In an interview to TV news channel Times Now, Modi expressed confidence about his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory in the next Lok Sabha polls, but remained tight-lipped over his own candidature for the prime minister’s post.

“In 2014, the BJP will set the agenda for polls, people of the country will make BJP victorious, and the way people of Gujarat have formed a Congress-free Gujarat, people of the country will have a Congress-free India,” he said.

Modi also termed dynastic politics a bad trend for any democracy.

“Dynastic politics should not be encouraged in democracy. It does not mean two people of one family cannot be in politics, but unfortunately, the country presently is in the clutches of dynastic rule,” he said.

Modi sought to clarify his remarks at a book release function at Gandhinagar April 4 which were seen as a clear indication of his prime ministerial ambitions.

Modi had said at the function that he was being told that he had repaid his debt to Gujarat and had to pay his debt to the country.

He had said every citizen owes a debt to “Mother India”.

“If someone heard my lecture, the person who spoke before me said Gujarat ‘ka karz pura ho chuka hai, desh ka karz pura kijiye (You have fulfilled the debt of Gujarat. Now fulfill your debt to the country)’. I said it is not my debt alone and every citizen has to fulfill the country’s debt,” Modi told the news channel.

Modi said that the media had expertise in giving a spin to remarks.

“We have been RSS workers since childhood and have been told from childhood to do something for the country. If we clean villages with a broom, we feel we are doing something for the country. We do something to serve the poor in Gujarat, we feel we are serving the nation,” Modi said.

He said citizens should have a feeling that whatever they do, it is for the country.

“We need to create the atmosphere that everyone should work thinking they are serving the nation,” Modi said, and added that the country would not function if people start thinking that they can serve the country only by holding a post.

Modi, who has often been in the line of fire of the Congress, said such attacks would only benefit his party.

“What I had said during the Gujarat elections, I will repeat. ‘Jitna kichad uchhala jayega, utna hi kamal khilega (the more mud is hurled, the more the lotus will bloom),” he said.

The lotus is the BJP’s election symbol.

–Indo-Asian news Service

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