The fact that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has said that the Congress party will cut into votes of BJP is actually a confessional statement that over the years the grand old party of India has emerged as a ‘fringe party’, senior BJP leader and Union Minister Arun Jaitley said here on Thursday.
“I have said this for quite sometime now that a party of national mainstream is slowly becoming a fringe party. The grand old party of Indian politics is now a fringe organisation,” he said.
“This is not merely in size only. During Pt Jawaharlal Nehru’s time and under Indira Gandhi it was a party of 300 plus MPs. After Indira Gandhi was assassinated, it became a party of 400 plus. Late Rajiv Gandhi made it a party of 150 except in 2009,” he told reporters here adding and now the Congress is hardly a party of 40 to 70 members strength in Lok Sabha.
“In numbers they are fringe. And the stand Congress party is taking is also like a fringe party. Even in economic policies. Can you imagine during Pt Nehru’s time or under Narasimha Rao if there was sloganeering of ‘Tukde Tukde’, would any Congress leader ever go there,” Mr Jaitley said in veiled attack on Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
“Such things are done only by fringe organisations,” he said.
“Even in electoral strategy, now that a Congress leader (Priyanka Gandhi Vadra) has said that it is a vote cutter party, it is only a confessional statement of a fringe party,” Mr Jaitley said. (UNI)
Answering questions, Mr Jaitley criticised the manner some Congress leaders have been trying to prove themselves as ‘Hindus’.
“I have not seen senior Congress leaders going to temples in 2004, 2009 and 2014. Now, I think they seemed to face some compulsion and so are doing this,” he said.
Finance Minister said – ” Garv se Hindu kahena chunaoi Hinduon ka riwaz ban gaya hae (It is now part of electoral fashion to call themselves as Hindus during election season)”.
“Once upon a time, VHP used to say, ‘Garv se kaho Hum Hindu haen’, they used to call this communalism. Now Digvijay Singh and others are only doing the same,” Mr Jaitley said.
