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Lok Sabha elections 2019- Priyanka myth has been eroded: Jaitley
Jaitley, who has been writing blogs in the run-up to the national elections, posted his latest blog hours after Modi completed his road show in Varanasi. Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath participated in the Ganga Aarti with Modi later in the city.
Union minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said the myths surrounding Priyanka Gandhi Vadra “stand eroded” after the Congress named Ajay Rai as its candidate from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi.
Priyanka Gandhi was widely speculated to make her electoral debut from Varanasi.
“The myths of Priyanka Gandhi stand eroded. India’s conventional wisdom has been ‘bandh muthi lakh ki, khul gaye toh khak ki’. The myth of ‘Priyanka will make a difference’ was worth a lakh. Today, the myth has lost its value. The cards are out in the open for public scrutiny,” Jaitley wrote in his blog.
Jaitley, who has been writing blogs in the run-up to the national elections, posted his latest blog hours after Modi completed his road show in Varanasi. Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath participated in the Ganga Aarti with Modi later in the city.
Jaitley described Rai’s nomination as a “surreptitious announcement” and called him a “political lightweight”. “The build-up of the last two weeks had been that Priyanka Gandhi would be fielded against the Prime Minister. She rejoiced in giving daily bytes to the media that she was ready to take on the Prime Minister. Her brother [Rahul Gandhi] claimed that the Party was building up the suspense for an eventual thriller. Obviously, she quietly chickened out of the contest,” Jaitley said.
Expressing disappointment that Congress has not fielded Priyanka Gandhi, Jaitley added her public life for the last two months showed that “India has changed, dynasties don’t matter”.
He cited the changes in Varanasi after Modi won the seat. “The Gandhis must introspect [about] the plight of Amethi and Rae Bareli in the last forty years and compare it to what the Prime Minister has done in Varanasi in the past five years.”
Jaitley hoped Varanasi will give the new India an opportunity to decide the fate of a “tried, tested and successful leader” as against a new “political dynast”.
