“That I liked or disliked Narendra Modi is not of any consequence. What is important, however, that before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, I was one of those who believed that if the Bharatiya Janata Party had to win the polls, Modi was the best bet.”
Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha — a former BJP leader and a vocal critic of the Modi government’s policies — said this in a recent interview with The Wire. That he no longer thinks Modi is the best bet for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, was made abundantly clear in the course of the interview.
Sinha said that the BJP had hoped that not only would it solve the problems inherited from the previous government, it would also be able to make good the promises they made in their manifesto. After a wait of 40 odd months, Sinha, concerned with the direction that the party and the government had taken, felt he could no longer remain silent.
Sinha said that amidst mass unemployment, agrarian distress, a visible scarcity of women safety and the constant spread of “the poison of communalism”, the BJP government has lost much of its 2014 sheen. With that, he speculated that the BJP’s 2019 performance — under the leadership of Modi and Amit Shah — would not even come close to that of 2014. He further said that many believe the BJP would not even manage to win 200 seats in the general elections.
Sinha isn’t the only one predicting such a fate for the BJP. Recently, poll analyst Partha Das of Chanakya predicted that while the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will cross the half-way mark by registering a victory in 293 constituencies and form government at the Centre, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will stand reduced to barely 250 seats.