Indore: Senior BJP leader and former union minister Arun Shourie on Saturday said Varun Gandhi, currently lodged in Etah jail and facing serious charges for his alleged hate speeches, understood "issues" better than his elder cousin and Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
"Varun is well-versed with issues related to people. Rahul (Gandhi) is an 'innocent kid'," Shourie said.
"Rahul is like an innocent kid and he should not be thrust upon with the responsibility to run the nation with a population of more than 100 crore," he told reporters in Indore.
He said that Rahul was a good person but his study and stance on issues like Indo-US nuclear deal, China and ISI were not known.
Political leaders should be gauged from their understandings of the issues, the senior BJP leader said.
When asked that the BJP has gone back to the temple issue in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, he said that two blunders have been overcome in the last 60 years -- first, new economic policy has prevailed over socialism, and secondly the pseudo-secularism has been unmasked.
He said that the credit of replacing the blunder of socialism with new economic policy goes to former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, while that of the second one goes to BJP leader who took out a 'Rath Yatra' on the temple issue.