As India prepares for elections, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram today hit out at BJP terming its economic policies as retrograde and “blood-eyed” and asked why the Opposition Party’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi never fielded a Muslim candidate.
He also expressed confidence that Rahul Gandhi would be elected as Prime Minister if Congress comes back to power, saying the young leader has enough “fire in his belly” for the post, although it was unlikely that any party would get majority and the polls were likely to throw a “very very fractured mandate“.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting here, Chidambaram also took a dig at Aam Aadmi Party, saying that there was no place for mob-democracy in India and the country was a party based democracy, where individuals cannot be bigger than a party.
On BJP being anti-muslim, Chidambaram said some sections of Muslim people may have voted for BJP, as Narendra Modi himself claims, but the fact is that Modi has never fielded any Muslim candidate ever in any election in his State. “What does that mean,” he wondered.
When asked why does not he join BJP, Chidambaram said BJP does not represent all sections of India and it does not even have a presence in many parts of the country.
“It has got policies that would destroy the very idea of India. Theirs is a blood-eyed economic model,” he said.