The “seeds” of dynastic politics was sown by the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, senior BJP leader and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday and maintained he had ignored the claims of many other senior leaders when Indira Gandhi was pushed as his successor.
“The seeds to convert India into a dynastic democracy were sown by Pt. Nehru who ignored a galaxy of tall national leaders of the Congress Party & started grooming his daughter Smt. Indira Gandhi as his successor. He made her the Congress President ahead of many other seniors,” he said in a series of a tweets, adding, ” I am sure, PM Modi & aspirational India will prevent the country from becoming a dynastic democracy.”
In a blog, Mr Jaitley said subsequently during her tenure, Indira Gandhi started grooming her sons to enter into the politics. She first encouraged her younger son Sanjay Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi to be her successors.
Referring to the politics 1990s when P V Narasimha Rao came into the scene, he said: “The Congress tried to remove itself from the shackles of dynasty for a brief period after the unfortunate assassination of Rajiv Gandhi but could not get out of its clutches for long.
“Smt Sonia Gandhi then took over as the longest serving President of the Indian National Congress and thereafter passed on the leadership baton of the party to her son Rahul Gandhi,” he said.
Mr Jaitley who is also chairman of the party publicity committee, ridiculed the manner the Congress party “generation after generation” has kept the grand old party’s leadership reserved for a member of the preferred family.
“When the Party is now in doldrums, another member of the family has entered the scene,” he said without taking the name of Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
In reference to the same old the menace of dynastic politics in other parties, he said, most families where a single dynast created the party have moved into the next generation where there may be more than one heir.
“Haryana, Bihar and Tamil Nadu have witnessed the battle of brothers,” he said, adding in Uttar Pradesh, it even turned a battle between a father (Mulayam Singh Yadabv) and son (Akhilesh Yadav).
“Andhra Pradesh earlier witnessed the battle of the sons-in-law. In Karnataka, there is an experiment of sons sharing the state and the grandsons sharing the Centre,” he said making a veiled attack on Gowda family as the two grandsons of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda — Prajwal Revenna and Nikhil Gowda are likely to contest for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In Maharashtra, the initial ripples among the family members of different leaders have also started, he said without elaborating.
In a sarcastic note, Mr Jaitley wrote, “The Congress believes that two owners are better than one. Will Confucius be proved right and history record that one eventually prevailed over the other or will it be otherwise. One failed. The other won’t take-off (UNI)
Pt Nehru sowed seeds of dynastic politics by elevating Indira to top post: Jaitley
