Jaitley doubtful of a Congress challenge in 2019

FM slams party, says its parliamentary obstructionism was blended with Rahul Gandhi's "rent-a-cause" approach

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday attributed the decimation of the Congress in the recently concluded elections in five states to its adoption of fringe positions, not behaving as a natural party of governance, its parliamentary obstructionism being blended with its leader and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi’s “rent a cause” approach.

Jaitley also said the Centre will work closely in cooperation with the governments of regional parties and all the five newly elected state governments. In his blog post on Friday, Jaitley said the Congress today is threatened of being pushed increasingly to the margins. “Will it be the main challenger to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in 2019, or will it stand behind a hotchpotch combination of ideologically disparate regional groups?” he asked.

The Finance Minister wondered about the nature of the ‘surgery’ Congress party leaders are now talking about? “Will the Congress evolve into a structured party with a galaxy of leaders or will it remain a dynastic party?” he asked. After election results were announced on Thursday, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had tweeted: “Today’s results disappointing but not unexpected. We have done enough introspection shouldn’t we go for a major surgery.” In his Facebook post, Jaitley said: “the most important political analysis emerging from the results is a significant setback to the Congress party.”

He said Congress lost Kerala because its government was mired in corruption scams and in Assam, its traditional policy of encouraging illegal immigration as a source of vote bank invited popular wrath. He said that the Congress in Tamil Nadu was a laggard in the DMK-Congress alliance. “Its poor strike rate pulled the DMK alliance down. In West Bengal, the alliance with the Left was an ideological compromise. It proved counter-productive,” he said.

He said this election for the BJP marks a significant geographical expansion. Jaitley said few had believed in 2008 that BJP can make a government in Karnataka. He said the BJP was on a comeback trail in that state which currently has a Congress government.

He said the BJP has a coalition government with the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh, is pushing the politics of Kerala to a tri-polar position and is the largest party in Bihar. In the BJP’s eastward movement, it will now form a government in Assam, is part of two coalition governments in the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland and has made a sizeable seat and vote presence in West Bengal.

He said the recent election was another reminder that the Left has ideologically become irrelevant globally and their political and economic models widely rejected. Jaitley said the Left victory in Kerala was the result of an unpopular government losing an election and an opponent winning by default. “Extreme positions espoused by a few in the Universities of Jadavpur and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cannot be a mainstream agenda of India,” he said.