Advani praises Modi on blog

New Delhi, March 25 (IANS) Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani Sunday came out with praise for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for being featured on the cover of the Time magazine.

The praise came even as Modi's absence from the BJP campaign in recent assembly elections raised speculation about the chief minister distancing from party leaders.

In the latest post on his blog, Advani noted that Modi was only the third Gujarati to feature on the prestigious US magazine's cover after Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel.

Quoting recent media articles, Advani said that Modi was a more popular choice for prime minister's post than Rahul Gandhi.

"In a recent opinion poll by the magazine India Today, 24 percent of those surveyed thought Modi should be the next prime minister; Rahul Gandhi polled 17 percent," he said.

Advani also recalled the incident of the US rejecting a visa for Modi even though the Gujarat chief minister did not apply for one.

"The irony is that while the U.S. government has refused a visa to Modi, a report prepared by a think tank of the U.S. Congress has in a 100-page report assigned very high marks to Modi for his governance," he wrote in the blog post.