Build Campaign For 2019 Around PM's "Matchless Leadership": Arun Jaitley

Union minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday asked the party workers to build the narrative of the Lok Sabha polls campaign around Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "matchless" leadership and his government's performance as this will ensure the saffron party's victory in the election.

In his address at the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national convention, the finance minister told the party workers that the next five months would be all about the general election, so whenever they spoke or delivered a speech, they should always keep the polls and the party's victory in mind.

Suggesting that PM Modi's leadership was the BJP's biggest strength in the upcoming polls, Mr Jaitley said the party workers should build the campaign narrative around it as the Opposition would try to divert the attention from it.

"We should set the narrative around Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership, no one can stand in front of it and if the discussion is only on leadership, then no one can defeat us. The Opposition will divert the attention from this topic," he said.

If all the BJP workers decided that the discussion would only be around leadership, then the party could win the election, Mr Jaitley added.

He said the primary issue in the Lok Sabha polls would be who would lead the country, followed by the performance of the PM Modi government.

Talking about the Opposition efforts in cobbling an anti-BJP coalition, Mr Jaitley, without mentioning any name, took a dig at various leaders and said they all aspired to become the prime minister but did not want to stand in front of PM Modi.

"Whether it is the prince of the Congress, ''didi'' from Bengal, ''babu'' from Andhra or ''behenji'' of Uttar Pradesh, they all want to be the prime minister and their swords will come out after the results of the election," he said.

Pointing out that experiments to form such coalitions had failed in the past, the Union minister claimed that these alliances would collapse amid clashes of the ambitions of various leaders, who had ideological differences with each other.

Speaking on the performance of the PM Modi government, Mr Jaitley said it had not committed a single mistake for which the party workers should feel ashamed.