Modi gets Southern treat, Cong warns of indigestion

Chennai: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa’s meeting was labeled as a power lunch—an apt description going by the menu.

Modi on Monday met Jayalalithaa in his first big political meeting after the Gujarat elections—a meeting that has sparked off speculations that the BJP and AIADMK party were stitching an alliance for the next Lok Sabha polls.

Playing a "generous host" coinciding with the 'Pongal' harvest festival, the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister laid out a lavish lunch described as a "princely 45-course meal" for the BJP leader at her Poes Garden residence but what was exactly discussed was kept under wraps.

According to the five-star hotel, which prepared the meal, Modi, a strict vegetarian, was served sumptuous south Indian delicacies.

Jayalithaa, who snapped her party's ties with the BJP after the 2004 poll debacle in which the DMK-Congress alliance swept the Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, offered Modi sweetened rice 'Pongal' for his victory in the elections.

BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad, who accompanied Modi, said the two-hour long meeting was a routine event and "Jayalalithaa appreciated the thumping victory of Modi and congratulated him."

"It was an extraordinary lunch! We discussed a whole range of issues," he said.

"We also discussed a whole range of contemporary issues," he said. Asked whether the meeting took the AIADMK and the BJP a step towards forming an alliance, he said: "no comments."

L Ganesan, the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit president, told reporters that Modi and Jayalalithaa were friends and she invited the Chief Minister her for lunch as she could not attend his swearing-in. "Nothing more than that," he said.

But he did not rule out an alliance with the AIADMK and said: "Our aim is to get the maximum number of MPs from Tamil Nadu, who will be supporting L K Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate. We are not averse to alliance with any party, barring the Congress, Left and the DMK for the next Lok Sabha polls," he said.

The Congress ridiculed the Modi-Jayalalithaa meeting, saying both the leaders could get "political indigestion."

"It is good to have lunches but political lunches can cause indigestion," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi in Delhi.

(With PTI and UNI)