New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced its 2014 election team on Friday.

“BJP has constituted 20 committees for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, and all the committees will be steered by Narendra Modi,” BJP spokesperson Ananth Kumar said.

The election manifesto committee will be headed by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi, with Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Prem Kumar Dhumal, Sushil Kumar Modi, Vijay Kumar Malhotra and Laxmi Kanta Chawla as its members.

“The BJP would also release a vision document,” Ananth Kumar said. “That will happen under the supervision of Nitin Gadkari.”

The electronic, print and outdoor media campaign committee would be looked after by Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah.

The spokesperson, addressing a press conference, also added that more than 100 rallies would be organised all over the country from next month.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said the country needed a strong government and a “dependable face” as its leader but refused to specify the name of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader his party found acceptable as the prime ministerial candidate.

Thackeray said people were not sure who was the leader of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Stressing the need to bring a strong government, he said that there is “need of a dependable face”.

Asked later to elaborate, Thackeray only said that “there were many dependable leaders”.

He refused to specify if he was referring to Modi.

Shiv Sena, in the past, has backed BJP leader Sushma Swaraj as the prime ministerial candidate of National Democratic Alliance (NDA). However, Thackeray earlier this week defended Modi’s comments about being a Hindu nationalist and said that the decision of the Janata Dal-United to leave NDA was wrong.

In his speech, Thackeray said the UPA government was running as a “pre-paid card”.

“First pay money and then talk and when you dial, the reply often is that number is outside the network,” Thackeray said.

Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said her party would never support Modi.

Training her guns on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, she said: “They have been ruling for 10 years. During this time they never talked about Narendra Modi. Now with elections round the corner, they are telling people that if you don’t vote for us, Modi will become prime minister.”

She accused the BJP of failing to play the role of a responsible opposition in parliament. “They are not playing the role of a responsible opposition. Actually there is no enmity between the Congress and the BJP.”

Alleging that the BJP believed in the politics of dividing people into Hindus and Muslims, she said: “But actually, they care for the interests of neither Hindus nor Muslims.”

Social activist Anna Hazare on Friday said he had never said that Modi was not communal.

“I didn’t say that Modi is not communal. I said that I can’t say, as I don’t have any evidence. I have never praised him,” Hazare said.

“He is leading a party [Bharatiya Janata Party, in the next general elections] which is communal so that makes him communal too.”

Hazare further said that the country needed the Lokpal Bill and not communalism as it will divide the society.