Political observers saw Jaitley’s blog post as a message to Sushma Swaraj. Jaitley had earlier objected to Swaraj's criticism over inducting controversial leader B Sriramulu into the BJP in Karnataka. Even then Jaitely had disapproved Swaraj’s position, and accused her of focusing on "marginal issues" that could "take our eye off the ball" in the run up to the polls.
Jaitley’s advice to Singh may also not go down well with party patriarch L K Advani and his supporters. Jaswant is seen as a supporter of Advani, and part of the party’s old guard. Advani disagreed with party top brass over his seat selection as well as his opposition to the BJP naming Narendra as the PM candidate.
“What does a politician do when after a successful political career the party is unable to accommodate him once? That is when his discipline and political loyalty are to be tested,” wrote Jaitley, possibly sending a message to Singh, Swaraj and Advani, all at once.
In the same blog post, Jaitley used Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots to counter his opponent Amarinder Singh in Amritsar. “Despite my ancestral roots in Punjab, Captain Sahib (Amarinder) called me an ‘outsider’ and a ‘pseudo’ Punjabi. Will he be kind enough to tell me which state in India does (Congress president) Mrs Sonia Gandhi belong to?”
Jaitley accused Amarinder of lowering the level of debate through “personalized and discourteous language”.
“Captain Sahib further wants to know if after winning from Amritsar, will I shift to Amritsar. Surely, I will have both an office and residential base in Amritsar, but will he ever be available to the people of Amritsar at all. Past experience shows that he has been inaccessible not only to the people but also to his own party leaders,” he wrote.
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