FILE photo: Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley
BJP leader
Arun Jaitley has taunted the Congress saying its strategy of bringing in additional fire-power to its election campaign in the form of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has boomeranged.
"The eclipse of
Rahul Gandhi as the defacto Prime Ministerial candidate of Congress is virtually complete... the sister has succeeded in robbing the brother from being in the limelight," he wrote in what the BJP leader calls his campaign diary.
(Also read: In Rahul Gandhi's Constituency, They Say Priyanka is Better )Just as talk peaked of how the Congress seemed to be hurtling unstoppable towards its worst-ever electoral performance, Ms Vadra has attempted a fightback, launching an aggressive campaign. She has attacked the BJP and
Narendra Modi, its prime ministerial candidate, every day in her speeches in Raebareli and Amethi, the constituencies of her mother Congress president Sonia Gandhi and brother Rahul Gandhi, who is the party number 2.
Mr Jaitley alleged that Ms Vadra's campaign, "ostensibly intended to attack
Narendra Modi daily in somewhat impolite language," has merely shifted the focus from her older brother, who is leading the Congress campaign and is widely seen as his party's natural choice for Prime Minister should it come to power again.
"Attack Modi was the strategy but 'dilute Rahul' is the consequence... Having pushed the brother out of the frame the sister has to realize that there is much more in politics and the country than only 'our family'," Mr Jaitley wrote.
He alleged that "When he (Rahul Gandhi) was not seen as being able to deliver" first Sonia Gandhi stepped in and then Priyanka Gandhi, who does not hold any political office.
Priyanka, 42, is not contesting the elections - she is managing the campaigns of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. In her speeches, she has made it clear she is an emissary of her brother, offering praise for him and defending him against the taunts hurled by Mr Modi, who has described him as "a
shahzada" (prince) with little to offer beside his famous last name.
(Priyanka takes on Modi for comparing Rahul to comic Kapil Sharma)She has countered Mr Modi's barb with barb and allegation with counter-allegation, making headline-grabbing speeches as her party fights possibly its toughest election ever.
(Elections: full coverage)