THE “frightening and scary scenario” that the Opposition promises as an alternative will be responsible for its rout in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday.

 

 

“The positive reasons for the Prime Minister’s acceptability has been his decisiveness, integrity and performance, his delivery of resources to the poor, and his security doctrine which has been a game changer. The NDA’s strength has been a complete absence of any confusion about leadership or programme. There is an absolute consensus,” he said in a blog post. Jaitley said that the groundswell in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become consolidated as the seventh and last phase of Lok Sabha elections approaches to a closure.

 

“The not-so-positive reason for the Prime Minister’s high acceptability levels is the absence of any cogent or coherent alternative. Conventionally, it used to be referred to as the ‘TINA’ factor. This effectively means that ‘There is no alternative.’ If the Opposition is giving vague assurances of an alternative, the same is either too scary or absolutely frightening,” the Finance Minister said.

 

Jaitley said that the Opposition could not conduct a meeting and forge an alliance in key States “for the obvious fear that many will not attend it.”

 

“The common thread which brings them together is negativism - to get rid of one person. They have no agreement on either a leader or programme. They are a completely fractured Opposition which could not come together before or during the election,” he said.

 

Attacking the Opposition, Jaitley further said, “Who will believe their assurance that they can come together after the election? They are institution wreckers. They do not allow Parliament to function.