Modi’s global stature nowhere close to that of Nehru, Indira or Vajpayee, says Yashwant Sinha

Vajpayee must be dismayed looking at Modi govt from heaven, says former Union minister Sinha, questions functioning of EC & ED and govt's claims about India's economy.

Yashwant Sinha | Manish Mondal | ThePrint

Hazaribagh: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is nowhere close to Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, or Atal Bihari Vajpayee in global stature and people, by and large, are in no mood to give him a third term, former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha has said.

Sinha, who also served as Union finance minister under the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2018 after having been with the party for nearly two and a half decades. He has since been a vocal critic of the Modi-led government, joined Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in 2021 and resigned from all party positions in 2022 when the Opposition named him its joint presidential candidate.

Speaking to ThePrint in an interview, Yashwant Sinha said the 2024 Lok Sabha polls are the first election since 2009 when there is no “wave”. “People are not somehow enthusiastic about the election,” he added.

On the BJP’s slogan of ‘Abki baar, 400 paar’, Sinha said that in the last two elections, the BJP had already touched the ceiling of votes it could get in various states, especially in the Hindi belt, in which the party has a strong presence. “When you touch the upper limit, you can only go down from there,” he said.

Asserting that there is “a certain amount of boredom” with the BJP now, he said, “You become stale after 10 years. And you can’t make any fresh promises… they will carry no weight with the people.”

Comparing the prime minister to his predecessors, he said, “In terms of global stature, Modi is nowhere compared to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he is nowhere compared to Indira Gandhi, he is nowhere compared to Jawaharlal Nehru, but he is supposed to be the greatest prime minister India has ever had, ‘kyunki unka danka baj raha hai (because his support is being drummed up)’.”

Sinha also discussed Modi’s “anti-Muslim” comments during the election campaign, saying that he feels “extremely sorry” and “very distressed” about the PM’s remarks. “Modi has been trying his best, his hardest, to make this into a communal election like it was in 2014, like it was in 2019, and like it was in all his Gujarat assembly elections,” he said.

When asked how Vajpayee would look at the current government, Sinha said he must be “very, very dismayed, in heaven”. Vajpayee, he said, was a very different person, and that in the time they worked together, “there was not a single occasion where he might have resorted to igniting communal flames”.

Pointing to differences between Vajpayee and Modi, Sinha said the former was democratic in his approach. Vajpayee was a tall leader but never tried to dominate the party as Modi does, he said.

“Whether in the party or the government (under Vajpayee), we all expressed our views as freely as possible… He (Vajpayee) overruled me many times, but never said you can’t express an opinion,” he said. “Here, I’m told nobody has any right or the authority to express their views.”

Sinha refuted several claims made by the Modi-led government in the past, from an improvement in the country’s “global stature” to economic growth. He said he feels the government has been “dressing up” the growth figures.

On the functioning of the Election Commission (EC) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), both of which have come under criticism, Sinha said the EC “doesn’t appear to be a fair arbiter in these elections” and has “covered itself in the mud”, and that the ED’s functioning reflected a phenomenon developed over the past 10 years of the government misusing its agencies.

After 10 years in power, ‘Modi’s guarantee will not work’

In an apparent reference to Modi’s election slogan of ‘Modi ki Guarantee’, Sinha said, “This whole talk of a guarantee sounds absolutely hollow, from someone who has been in office for 10 years.”

He referred to the Constitutional provision in the United States, that allows the President to remain in office for only two terms, each term being four years. The argument behind it is that eight years is a long enough period to do good work for the people, he said.

“Here, the term is five years. So, after 10 years (two terms), you can’t come back to the people and say, ‘Look, I couldn’t do it in the last 10 years. But if you give me another five years, then I’m going to give you this. And this is my guarantee’,” he said.

On the BJP’s target of 400 seats, he said that the BJP government has been talking about it since the start of the elections, but nobody in the party has explained in all these months where the additional 100 seats are going to come from.

“Are they going to come from Rajasthan where you have already touched the ceiling? Gujarat where you already touched the ceiling? Himachal? Delhi? Where? Unless you’re going to get, let’s say, 20 out of 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, or you’re going to sweep Kerala, or Telangana, or Andhra, or Odisha, or Bengal, for that matter, which is extremely unlikely,” he said, adding, “So everyone that I’m aware of is talking about the BJP numbers going down in this election.”

The BJP, Sinha said, has got into a habit of fixing impossible targets.

Sinha also said that if the assessments of various people are right, then the BJP, along with its allies, is unlikely to get a majority in the Parliament. “If they don’t get a majority, obviously somebody else will get that, and that somebody else is the INDIA alliance,” he added.

ED actions ‘unfortunate’, polling data revision ‘questionable’

The ED has come under fire over the arrests of leaders from Opposition parties under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The ED is the law enforcing agency under the finance ministry, which Sinha headed under Vajpayee. At the time, he did not bother to interfere in the work of the ED, Sinha told ThePrint.

“So, this time around, I am shocked that the ED is behaving in such a partisan manner,” he said, adding that the ED’s action against former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal just before the elections is “very unfortunate”.

As for the EC, Sinha said it has “shown absolutely no courage except to go for small fry”.

The EC has faced criticism during these elections for its inaction towards alleged violations of the Model Code of Conduct by the ruling party, and the revision of polling data.

On the EC revising the voter turnout in the first four phases of elections, he said that the data is compiled from form 17C, which gives the count of votes cast at each polling station, and that the number suddenly going up is “questionable”. “Unless the explanation of the Election Commission is it (initially)did not get all the forms 17C? (Then,) why didn’t it get all the forms 17C?” Sinha asked.

“How can the (turnout) percentage go up suddenly from 61 to 67 or something?… a few crore voters will (have to) be added to the list of voters. There is no satisfactory explanation,” he added.

‘Sorry about Jayant not getting BJP ticket from Hazaribagh’ 

On his son, Jayant Sinha, not getting a ticket from the family borough of Hazaribagh this election, Yashwant Sinha said that the powers that be in the BJP have to explain, adding that he was surprised by the move. Jayant Sinha won the election from Hazaribagh in 2014 and 2019. However, the BJP has fielded Manish Jaiswal, a two-time MLA from Hazaribagh Sadar, in the constituency.

“Nothing is clear. But maybe Modi ji does not need people like him in the party, or Parliament,” Sinha said.

On whether his son had to pay for his open criticism of the BJP government and its policies, Yashwant Sinha asserted that he has been critical of the BJP’s policies since formally leaving the party in 2018, but the party still nominated his son in 2019.

“So, it is not clear to me why now five years later, they would deny him the ticket on my account,” he said, adding, “It’s not unlikely or unusual for members of the same family to be on different sides in politics.”

However, he expressed his regret in case he is the reason for Jayant not getting a ticket. “I can only say I’m very sorry for it. And this should not have been the reason because we are two different individuals. Jayant Sinha has served the party and the constituency to the best of his abilities and never allowed my criticism to come in the way of his duties,” the father said.

‘Demonetisation, GST implementation slowed down economy’

Sinha also claimed that the Modi-led government has made one mistake after another when it comes to the Indian economy over the past ten years. “Some of these were very disastrous; some of them were pernicious,” he said.

He referred to demonetisation and the annual growth rate of the economy. “Before demonetisation, we were growing at the rate of about 8 percent per annum. After demonetisation, it plummeted to 4 percent and then slowly, slowly picked up.”

He raised questions over the impact of demonetisation, saying that no case was initiated against people who deposited black money into their bank accounts during demonetisation. “So, that means that the entire black money in this country has become white. And nobody is talking about it,” he added.

He also said the manner in which the government implemented the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was a “disaster” and caused a huge setback to the economy.

Sinha said he doesn’t believe that “we are where we were pre-COVID-19 or even pre-demonetisation”. “The government doesn’t allow those figures which are against it to come out in the public domain. They suppress those figures or dress up those figures so people get a completely wrong view,” he said.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)