Modi rally, Jamshedpur

Jamshedpur, April 10

BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, someone who rarely interacts with the media, apologised to journalists on Thursday in Jamshedpur for the inconvenience caused to them by those attending his rally.

Modi, who had just begun his speech at the Gopal Maidan, apologised after people broke through multiple barricades to enter an enclosure meant for the media and invited "VVIPs" and had altercations with some journalists. "Help the press; do not trouble them. These are people who have to run around more than us politicians during elections," he said, after taking a 15-second pause during his introductory remarks to observe the chaos right in front of him.

After sternly asking those who were standing on chairs to sit, he addressed journalists in English: "I am sorry for that."

Nearly the first quarter of Modi's 19-minute speech to the brimming Gopal Maidan was about Jamshedpur and its labourers. "If the government's policies were in the right direction, we could have had a world-class automobile industry here," he said, adding that the villages around the city could become satellite towns. "We are a country that exports wheat and imports atta to make our rotis. We export iron ore; we import steel," he said.

He answered Congress President Sonia Gandhi's charge that the BJP is claiming that it would do magic overnight. "This country knows that, for the last 10 years, a black magician is sitting in Delhi. People lost jobs, farmers went into trouble and soldiers were beheaded," Modi charged, asking people to remove the black magician.

At one point in the speech, Modi tried to explain the contours of his government by asking the crowd, "What kind of a government do you want in Delhi?" The crowd chanted, "Modi Sarkar." Modi replied by asking, "I am not asking you whose government you want, but what kind of government you want." The crowd chanted back the same answer.