Jaitley confident of a larger mandate for BJP

As the electoral battle enters the Hindi heartland, senior BJP leader and Union minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said “euphoric reaction” at the ground suggests a mandate for his party larger than that of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In most of the states where elections are to be held in the future rounds, it will be “a direct contest” between the Congress and the BJP, he noted in his blog in which he primarily targeted the Congress and refrained from attacking any of the regional parties in the Hindi heartland.

“The Congress obviously is in no position to effectively take on the regional parties or the BJP,” he claimed.

The “only issue” in the future rounds is the width of the margin of victory of the BJP, he added.

Jaitley's remarks comes on a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi filed his nomination to contest Lok Sabha polls from Varanasi, amid a mega show of strength of his party and the NDA allies.

“A 65% to 70% approval rating for an incumbent prime minister is unprecedented in India. It is reflecting in the grounds well,” Jaitley said in his blog.

Exuding confidence in the NDA coming back to power for the second consecutive term winning the elections, the senior BJP leader said that Congress president Rahul Gandhi was showing signs of “desperation.”

“The desperation reached a peak when he, without realising that Arvind Kejriwal was playing games with him, offered him four seats contrary to the advice of the state unit. He (Rahul) displayed the desperation of a loser,” he said.

The desperation was at a climax when the Congress and the NCP “had to outsource” the job of attacking Modi to Raj Thackeray “without realising the fallout of such a move in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other North Indian states,” he added.