Shiv Sena praise Nehru, Indira, Manmohan

Janjivan Bureau
Mumbai: The Shiv Sena on Tuesday sought to play down the “praise” lavished on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over attracting foreign investments, saying the contributions of P V Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh towards bolstering India’s economy can’t be forgotten.
An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana today said: “There is no doubt that Modi is very popular and everywhere he went (in the US) there were chants of ‘Modi Modi’, but so were Nehru and Indira, even at a time there was no social media like today.”
“Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi is immensely popular in foreign countries, people like Narsimha Rao and Manmohan Singh laid the foundation of India’s economic progress and opened the country’s gates for other nations. How can we forget their contribution?” the Sena said in its mouthpiece ‘Saamana’.
“PM Modi enjoys extraordinary popularity overseas but we must not forget that Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao laid the foundation for India’s economic progress,” said the editorial.
The party further said that a revolution in Doordarshan and the telecommunication sector first happened during the regime of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, which was carried forward by her successor and son Rajiv Gandhi.
“Doordarshan started telecasting its programmes pan-India since 1982. It was on August 15, 1982 that Indira Gandhi’s Independence Day address to the nation was first telecasted on DD in colour,” Sena said.
“Later, it was Rajiv Gandhi who brought an era of computers and ensured that every village had phone and STD booths. He and his advisor Sam Pitroda are known as the architects of Indian telecommunication sector,” the Sena added.
PM Modi on Monday ended a five-day visit of the US, during which he attended a UN conference in New York, met with tech giants in Silicon Valley and visited Facebook and Google.