BJP senior leader, Arun Jaitley addresses supporters during an election campaign in Amritsar on April 10, 2014.
The BJP today saw Congress president Sonia Gandhi's appeal, telecast through the major news channels last night, as an "expression of no-confidence'' in her son Rahul, and said disparagingly that the ruling party's new election slogan should be "Mein nahin Mom.''
"The idea was to change the principal communicator of the party from the son to the mother. This was an expression of lack of confidence in Mr Gandhi, in as much as his speeches to the people were not working,'' leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley wrote in his latest blog. (
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Messages on paid television, the BJP leader argued, could not change the electoral agenda in the last minute. "Price rise, mismanagement of the economy, corruption, dilution of the office of the Prime Minister cannot be part of either Bhartiyata or Hindustaniyat,'' Mr Jaitley pointed out. (
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Mrs Gandhi, in her speech carried on the the main news channels as a paid-for ad, exhorted the voters to defeat the "divisive'' and "autocratic'' forces. The BJP, however, retaliated fast, contending that it betrayed the Congress' desperation over its fast-dipping prospects in the Lok Sabha polls.
"The only message that Mrs Gandhi's speech conveyed was that the Congress party's new slogan now was "Mein nahin Mom,'' Mr Jaitley said.