Certain of NDA’s win, Arun Jaitley calls gandhi family ‘albatross’ around Congress’ neck

PTI, May 21, 2019, 9:23 AM IST

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Monday said that the Gandhi family has become a liability for the grand-old party. “… in the Congress the first family is no longer an asset but an albatross around neck of the Party. Without the family, they don’t get the crowd, with it they don’t get the votes,” he said.

Jaitley also expressed hope that the results of 2019 general election would be in consonance with the outcome of multiple exit polls, which predicted a second term for the Narendra Modi-led NDA government.

Most exit polls have forecast another term for Prime Minister Modi, with some of them projecting that BJP-led NDA will get more than 300 seats to comfortably cross the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha.

“Many of us may continue to squabble over correctness and accuracy of the Exit Polls. The hard reality is that when multiple Exit Polls convey the same message, the direction of the result broadly would be in consonance with the message,” Jaitley said in a blogpost titled ‘The Message of Exit Polls’.

Observing that EVMs play no role in exit polls, the minister said if the actual results of the general election are in the same direction as exit polls, “the opposition’s fake issue of the EVMs would also lose its non-existent rationale”.

“If the Exit Polls are read along with the 2014 election results, it would be clear that there is a huge maturing of Indian democracy taking place. The electorate keeps national interest paramount before exercising a choice on whom to vote for. When well-meaning people with similar ideas vote in the same direction, it leads to the making of a wave,” he said.

He also said the personalised campaign against Prime Minister Modi did not cut much ice in 2014 and may not cut any ice in 2019.

“Leaders are judged on merit and not on caste or family names. Thus, the Prime Minister’s style of rising above caste and concentrating on performance related issues received far more acceptability with the electorate,” Jaitley said.

He said the voters are no longer willing to trust ‘Coalition of Rivals’ as their alliances are untenable.

The arithmetic of caste coalitions is no longer valid and has yielded place to national interest. “Fake issues only satisfy the ‘manufacturers of fakery’. The voters don’t buy them,” Jaitley added.