Ahmedabad: Home Minister L K Advani on October 8 came out in strong defence of Narendra Modi's "gaurav yatra" and took pride in the fact that he was continuing as Gujarat Chief Minister even six months after dissolution of the state Assembly.

He decried detractors, who had carried on a sustained campaign that President's Rule should be imposed in Gujarat after October three and said "today is October 8 and Modi is continuing as Chief Minister and would continue".

On a day's visit to the city and addressing his party workers, Advani hit out at Modi's critics calling Gujarat as "Godse's Gujarat" and said "the gaurav yatra" was undertaken to restore pride of the state after the Godhra incident and the violence in Ahmedabad which had given the state a bad name.

He said while during the 1984 riots in Delhi no efforts were made to control them, in the case of Gujarat "no other government took as firm steps to bring the violence under control as did Modi's".

India was secular because it was a Hindu-majority state. "While Pakistan declared itself a theocratic state after partition in 1947, the Constituent Assembly of India did not do so as it was in keeping with our cultural traditions," he said.

Reiterating that BJP was firm on its ideology, Advani said being a part of NDA government, "We have to abide by the coalition dharma."

PTI