A day after senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj tweeted her opposition to the entry of BSR Congress leader B. Sriramulu into the party, her senior colleague Arun Jaitley indirectly countered her, by saying that “relatively marginal issues such as declaration of candidates” should not divert attention from the core issues of governance.
Mr. Jaitley’s blogpost ‘Where do we Stand’ came on a day the BJP was grappling with its fourth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls and a day after Ms. Swaraj’s public opposition in her tweet in which she made it “absolutely clear that B. Sriramulu has been admitted in the party despite my stiff opposition.”
Mr. Sriramulu, a close associate of mining barons, the Reddy brothers, has been put up by the BJP in Bellary in Karnataka.
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The Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said the BJP needs to concentrate on consolidating its gains. “The country’s mood is to install a BJP-led government. Between now and the polling date, all BJP leaders and cadres must work towards the goal of adding an additional two per cent votes across the country. Every incremental percentage vote is capable of adding a significant number of seats to our kitty,” Mr. Jaitley said.
“Relatively marginal issues such as declaration of candidates, particularly who is in and who is out, cannot be allowed to dominate the political agenda in the BJP. These issues divert the attention from the core issues of governance,” he said in his blogpost.
“Besides Mr. Modi’s leadership and an anti-incumbency wave against the UPA, the big issue which is likely to dominate the voters’ mind is – Who can provide a stable government? The more we emphasise the importance of this issue, the larger will be the advantage to the front runner,” Mr. Jaitley said.
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