‘GRAND ALLIANCE A TRIED, TESTED AND FAILED IDEA’
Next year’s Lok Sabha elections will be a contest between the “tried, tested and failed idea” of a “mahagatbandhan” (grand alliance) of opposition parties and the promise of stability and coherence held out by a Bharatiya Janata Party-led ruling dispensation that has a strong leader at the helm, Jaitley said.
NEWDELHI: Next year’s Lok Sabha elections will be a contest between the “tried, tested and failed idea” of a “mahagatbandhan” (grand alliance) of opposition parties and the promise of stability and coherence held out by a Bharatiya Janata Party (Bjp)-led ruling dispensation that has a strong leader at the helm, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday.
India’s aspirational society will not ‘commit suicide’ by choosing the former over the latter, Jaitley said at the 16th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
Mahagatbandhans are inherently unstable and their longevity is limited, the minister said, citing the examples of previous coalition governments led by Charan Singh, VP Singh, Chandra Shekhar, HD Deve Gowda and IK Gujral in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
“(The) 2019 (national elections) will be a choice between a stable government with a coherent policy and a strong leader versus a completely anarchic combination,” Jaitley said.
His remarks come in the backdrop of efforts by the Congress and other opposition parties to cobble together an alliance to take on the BJP led by Narendra Modi in the 2019 elections. A successful coalition should have a “very strong nucleus,” he said.
The finance minister noted that the BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Modi had provided such a nucleus to the previous and current National Democratic Alliance governments.
“You cannot have a nucleus of a handful of people... it will then be an unstable nucleus,” Jaitley said. Next year is not a time when one can opt for an anarchic combination, he said, adding that an aspirational India, having missed the industrial revolution of the 1970s, wouldn’t back such an alliance.
“There are some (constituents of the proposed grand alliance) whose leaders are temperamentally maverick, there are some whose interests are purely regional — “give my state extra money,” (they say); and there are some who only want some criminal cases to be closed,” he said.
The Congress took exception to Jaitley’s remarks. Congress spokesperson Pranav Jha said rather than comment on opposition unity efforts, BJP should worry about a ‘maha gathbandhan’ of unemployed youngsters, distraught farmers, insecure women and the ignored middle class. “Everyone feels cheated and together they are going to unseat this arrogant government from the Centre as well as states,” he said.
At the event, in reply to a separate question, Jaitley said trusting individuals who came to the BJP only for positions of power had been a mistake that the party made in the past. Describing such politicians as “career nationalists,” the minister said they remained nationalist only as long as the BJP offered them a career.
“The moment we could not do it, they looked elsewhere. I have always maintained within the party and outside that trusting people like this who hang around in the periphery of political parties was probably a mistake that we historically made,” Jaitley said.
He did not name anyone, but it was seen as an oblique reference to former Union ministers such as Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie who have openly criticised the Prime Minister and his government on policy matters and the way India’s ruling party was functioning.
Jaitley also dismissed Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s statement — on Friday at the HT Leadership Summit — that the current regime was not allowing a debate to take place and was imposing its own idea of India on others, and particularly Gandhi’s claim that he had told the finance minister that Kashmir was on fire but he hadn’t been heard.