The BJP on Monday said it wished UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka contested against party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as the country now needs the ‘myth’ around her also to be ‘exploded’.
The BJP also slammed the Congress as just ‘a crowd around a family’ which sees no other alternative but Priyanka Gandhi after her brother Rahul did not click. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said the “Gandhis are under siege” and the situation now was akin to what happened in 1977 polls as the family charisma faded away and economic populism did not work.
“But a party which is merely a crowd around a family probably felt that the current leader in the family has not clicked. The real solution to the problem is to make the Congress a more structured party. The Congress party’s solution is, if one incumbent in the family fails, the alternative can only be another member of the family ... I had almost predicted this. I only wish that the desperate solution of Varanasi had been actually implemented. The country now needs the myth of the other family member also to be exploded,” Jaitley said in an article.
Jaitley’s remarks come close on the heels of Priyanka denying any intention of contesting elections, trashing reports that she wanted to challenge Modi from Varanasi seat and was stopped by the party high command.
She said it is a personal decision not to contest and that her family would ‘wholeheartedly’ support her if she ever wanted to.
On the Congress reportedly threatening its Chief Ministers of replacing them if they do not win seats, Jaitley said the problem is not with the Congress CMs and questioned why the ruling party was looking for scapegoats.
"If the Congress loses, it is not because of its Chief Ministers. It is squarely because of the quality of Government they ran and the non-inspirational personality of Rahul Gandhi. When the problem is within the family, why is the Congress looking for scapegoats outsideIJ," Jaitley added.
Toeing a similar line, BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said, "Priyanka Gandhi should have contested from Varanasi. Her husband Robert Vadra should have contested from Vadodara and other members of the Congress' family of maladministration, who have run away from elections, should also have contested".