Visit to BJP headquarters: PM Narendra Modi looks forward to meet old colleagues

NEW DELHI:“Rawat hai kya?

Aur Yadavji kahan hain?“ Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not forgotten his housemates from the days when he shared a cramped room in the barracks behind the BJP headquarters.

It was a sudden change in the day's itinerary that gave it a final twist and a high to party workers employed at the party headquarters in Delhi.Modi visited the party office on Tuesday and meet Rawat, Yadav, Kashiji and several others he had spent years with when he worked out of the barracks as general secretary.Without this stop over at 11, Ashoka Road, the first year celebrations of his prime ministership may have remained incomplete.

Modi was received at the party office, by BJP chief Amit Shah and general secretary (organisation) Ramlal. The PM then walked into the lobby , garlanded a statue of Deen Dayal Upadhyay and headed for the auditorium where he met about 80 staff members, including many familiar faces he had spent days with.

Modi, known for his sharp memory , called out names.And the tall, aging Hayat Singh Rawat, attached to the party president's office, walked up.“Kaise hai? Aap ne Kushabhau ki bahut sewa ki,“ Modi recalled. Rawat along with Ranjit Maurya had worked as `sahayaks' (personal attendants) to late Thakre, a legend in party circles. Rawat, wore his slight smile and nodded to communicate that he was fine.

“Aur Yadavji kahan hai,“ (where is Yadavji) Modi said, looking around for the familiar old Rajinder Yadav, a driver at the party office better known as Rajinder Ustad.

Whether it was the elderly Kanshi Ram or his son Vijay who is now a driver at the party office, or Madan Singh Rawat, the regular faces at the BJP headquarters, Modi thanked them all saying the party's big victory could not have been possible without any of them.