Yesterday, the Grand Alliance proposed the name of a new candidate who will potentially contest for the Prime Minister’s position. Speaking about candidates lined up to become PM from the Mahagathbandhan, former Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, said that he is the closest and most suited for the position. With new names surfacing on a daily basis, it seems that the Mahagathbandhan is nothing but a bunch of thugs who have joined hands only to be nominated as the next Prime Minister.
While addressing the issue at Shri Ram College’s Economic Summit, The two-time finance minister also made derogatory remarks about the Modi government. Talking about the alleged lack of jobs in the country, Sinha added, “You talk about 1.2 crore jobs. I would like to talk about the millions of kilometres of roads that we have to build, all that we need to do for agriculture, irrigation projects, storage processing, and all that and you know new townships to be created – there is so much work to be done that when we start doing that work we will create not 1.2 crore jobs but two crore, three crore jobs every year but we are not doing that, that’s the problem, so we will have to find somebody who is prepared to buy this theory”.
Further into the discussion, when asked, who is the face that will be nominated as Prime ministerial candidate, “The closest is me, myself,” Mr. Sinha snickered. Not only that, Yashwant Sinha also made the remark that he is the most qualified of the lot to get the PM’s post. The statement is surely not going to go down well with the other aspiring PM-candidates in the Mahagathbandhan (which, it seems, includes almost everyone in the Alliance).
On various occasions, different leaders from the alliance have extended their support to their favorite PM candidates, giving a sense that a lot needs to be done to iron out differences between members of the grand alliance. While former Prime Minister, Deve Gowda, has stated time and again that Rahul Gandhi is the most capable candidate to lead the so-called Mahagathbandhan, his son and the incumbent Karnataka CM, Kumaraswamy, rooted for Mamata Banerjee.
In another instance, the Congress party, in its pursuit to stop the BJP from coming to power, claimed to support any non- RSS backed candidate from the opposition for Prime Minister in 2019. According to an Economic Times report, a Congress functionary said, “Congress would be willing to accept any candidate from an Opposition party. We are comfortable seeing any Prime Minister other than an RSS backed one.”
There are further speculations that the BSP supremo, Mayawati, may be projected as PM from the Mahagathbandhan, in order to appease Dalit voters. One other report by Punjab Kesari speculated that the Grand Old party may put forward senior leader Mallikarjun Kharge’s name for the post of PM.
Whatever the final outcome is, the one thing that is certain is that right now the proposed list of PM candidates from Mahagathbandhan is overly crowded. Yashwant Sinha is the most recent contender for the position but he is probably not the last. Every leader seems to be more interested in undermining the other and elevating themselves instead of hashing out a workable common program through which the alliance can at least counter the BJP in a concrete manner besides indulging in constant ad hominem attacks on PM Modi.