New Delhi: Senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi on Friday said that the party President Rajnath Singh had not pleaded with the US for a visa for Narendra Modi and neither has the Gujarat Chief Minister applied for one.
Asked by reporters about his opinion to Singh pleading Modi's case with a foreign country, the BJP leader said, "He has not pleaded for a visa. To the best of my knowledge he has not. Why should anybody plead for a visa? It is the right of the US to give or not give a visa."
Pressed further, he said his views on the matter are not the issue and it is up to the US to take a call. Singh is on a visit to the US and has reportedly raised the issue of granting a visa to Modi. Joshi maintained that as far as he is aware, Modi has never sought a US visa.
"I do not think Modi has ever applied for a US visa," he said. The US had taken a decision not to give a visa to Modi after he faced allegations of not doing enough to quell the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat in 2002. Over 1,000 people, most of them from the minority community, were killed in the riots.
BJP also said there should be probe into the recent issue of alleged forging of signatures of some MPs on a letter to US President Barack Obama demanding that Modi not be given a visa. "Some of these MPs have said it was not their signature.
The matter should be probed. If people like Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) have said it appears to be a case of misrepresentation then the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Vice President of India are competent to order a probe," Joshi said.
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