Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made a whistle-stop visit to Varanasi, a city in the throes of Assembly polls, declaring that the BJP had, in these elections, managed to expand its social base beyond its traditional strongholds, but spent much of his time speaking to traders, the core support of the BJP, to soothe ruffled feelings over demonetisation and tax notices since then.
Mr. Jaitley, who arrived here on Wednesday evening, held a meeting at the swanky Vinayak plaza, home of the city’s wealthy, and a breakfast meeting with another set of trade bodies on Thursday morning, in order to reassure this most loyal of the BJP’s support base.
Anguish at tax notices
Sources say that those who attended the meeting expressed their anguish at the tax notices that had been sent out after demonetisation, looking at the data for deposits.
“Mr. Jaitley assured them that these were just email enquiries that required to be answered with explanations, and that ‘notices’ in fact had been few and far between,” said a senior source in the BJP who was part of the meeting.
It is to be seen whether the meetings will soothe ruffled feathers among the Vaish (or trading community) that makes up nearly 4.5% of voters across the State and is often said to punch above its numerical weight in electoral influence because of its role as employer.
Speaking to the media later, Mr. Jaitley said Uttar Pradesh was “tired of the Samajwadi Party[SP]-Bahujan Samaj Party [BSP] type politics.”
“The kind of political model these two parties have imposed on the State, of dividing it on caste lines, identifying with particular groups, a natural fallout of that was that there were only one or two communities who would dominate governmental and other structures. Other groups would be kept out of the State machinery, as this identification with only particular groups was seen in government appointments as well,” he alleged.
He claimed that the BJP had, in the poll phases gone by, managed to bring along a large section of society that had been kept away from power.
“That is the polarisation that has occurred in these elections,” Mr. Jaitley said.
On nationalism debate
Commenting on the debate over the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s violent disruption of a meeting in Ramjas College in Delhi University, where JNU student Umar Khalid was to speak, Mr. Jaitley said that “if there is a debate on nationalism, then we will participate in it of course.”
“Everywhere, nationalism is a good word, and it is only in this country that it is being made to be a bad word,” he said.
