leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday said there should be no controversy over the issue of the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate and it should be announced at the earliest.
“The sooner the BJP announced PM candidate, the better it would be for the party,” Jaitley said, speaking at a conclave of BJP’s legal and legislative Cell.
Claiming that people are looking at BJP because of all-round failure of the UPA regime, he said though the BJP lost two consecutive elections, yet today the mood was in party’s favour. “We should not get a hit-wicket. That is a scenario where nobody bowls you out, but you give your own wicket. That is the only way we are going to lose this election,” he said.
In a clear hint that he was pitching in for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Jaitley said Parliamentary elections at times became like presidential elections, especially when the leader enjoyed overwhelming popularity.
“This has happened in the case of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in the past,” Jaitley said. He pointed out that if the next general election became a referendum on leadership, then BJP was surely going to win.
Jaitley has never been shy of expressing his preference for Modi as BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate. Jaitley insisted that there was a strong anti-incumbency and claimed that corruption and slowdown in the economy will be prominent issues in the next general elections. “You are importing inflation into the country,” he said.
Referring to the latest GDP figures, Jaitley said the fall in growth rate is a cause for concern and will impact employment. “For long the world has been warning us that there is a policy paralysis but the Government is busy in trying to cultivate its votebank. But today they neither have the votebank nor a strong economy,” he said.