PM in Mann ki Baat 2: You brought me back

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had said a few months ago that he would return with his monthly radio address after the elections, Sunday credited the people for his return to run the government.

On February 24, days before the Lok Sabha elections were announced, he had suspended his monthly ‘Mann ki Baat’ broadcast for March and April.

“When it (the February 24 episode) was about to end, I had stated that we would meet once again after 3 or 4 months … the confidence was not Modi’s. This trust was the trust of your foundation. You were the ones who transformed yourself into a pillar of trust,” he said in his first address of edition 2 of his programme.

“Actually speaking, I have not returned. You have brought me back. You positioned me here and gave me the opportunity to speak once again,” he said. He said when he spoke of returning with the programe after polls, some people had added a political hue to his remark.

In his first term, Modi had addressed the nation on 53 occasions between October 3, 2014 and February 24 this year through his monthly broadcast after coming to power in 2014. While discontinuing the programme, Modi had said he was doing so keeping in mind healthy democratic traditions.

“The rigours of elections called for hectic preoccupation, but the one thing that was missing was the sheer joy of Mann Ki Baat.’ For me, it was like experiencing a kind of void … I used to be uneasy, with a nagging feeling of a kind of emptiness ,” said the prime minister referring to the period of election campaign.

He said soon after the election process was over, he wanted to begin the programme. But in order to keep the ‘last Sunday of the month’ sequence, he waited for June 30. “But this Sunday has made one wait endlessly,” he said. He said many asked him as to why he went to Kedarnath and Badrinath shrines in the middle of the election process.

“Amidst the rigours of the election, speculations on victory or defeat … I undertook the journey. Most people have derived political conclusions out of that. For me, it was an opportunity to meet myself … I undertook the journey to meet my inner self … perhaps in that solitary cave, I got an opportunity to fill up the vacuum caused due to the long pause that Mann Ki Baat’ had to go through,” he said.