Shah: PM Template For What It Means To Be A Nat'l Leader

New Delhi: PM Narendra Modi is now the template for what it means to be a “national leader”, home minister Amit Shah has said, asserting that the label was earlier handed out to even politicians of no proven merit and only capable of winning the election from one or two safe Lok Sabha seats.

While national leaders were identified in the immediate aftermath of the independence movement by their “name recall” across regions because of their participation in the freedom struggle, in the latter decades, notably at the height of the coalition era, the expression came to be much abused, he said, adding that the “Delhi media” generously distributed the status to its “friends and favourites”.