Union home minister Amit Shah has said India's foreign policy “has been given a spine” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Speaking in an interview, the senior BJP leader made the remarks while comparing the foreign policy under previous prime ministers and governments.
“When historians will compare different PMs, I strongly believe they'll find that the biggest achievements have been under PM Modi's tenure. India's foreign policy was spineless earlier. It's Modi who gave a spine to it,” Shah said in an interview that was largely about Modi's legacy and marked the PM's 75th birthday that was last week.
Amit Shah was asked to pointedly compare Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first and so far the longest-serving PM, and Narendra Modi, whose continuous tenure of 11 years and counting is the second longest.
Shah said that, earlier, diplomacy would get undue precedence over security issues in India's foreign policy. He contrasted that with the policy of the BJP-led NDA regime under Modi since 2014.
“Whenever Pakistan carried out a terror attack… we prepared a reply with not a minute's delay, and delivered a befitting retaliation within a month,” Amit Shah said, speaking to NDTV in Hindi.
{{/usCountry}}“Whenever Pakistan carried out a terror attack… we prepared a reply with not a minute's delay, and delivered a befitting retaliation within a month,” Amit Shah said, speaking to NDTV in Hindi.
{{/usCountry}}“Indians' blood cannot be spilled any longer — we have made that amply clear," he added.
He also said that India and the world believes PM Modi is the “most popular prime minister so far”.
“PM Modi has been the longest-serving, when it comes to being a prime minister and a chief minister... I have seen only one person who hasn't taken a holiday in the last 24 years,” Shah further said about his fellow Gujarat native.
He said Modi has evolved from being a party worker at the local level to becoming a national leader of BJP, to then becoming CM of Gujarat, and then PM. Shah said he's had the good fortune of seeing how Modi has worked diligently — “always widening his vision as per the role" — since both of them come from the same state and have overlapping political careers “with a difference of 8-10 years”.
Shah, who turns 61 in October, is widely considered the second most powerful politician in the ruling BJP-led NDA after Modi. He was home minister also in the Gujarat state government when Modi was CM in the early 2000s. He moved to the national scene along with Modi a decade later, and served as BJP's national president before moving on to ministerial duties.