Who is in or out is marginal issue, says Arun Jaitley

BJP leader Arun Jaitley took a veiled dig at his party colleague Sushma Swaraj for opposing BSR Congress leader B Sriramulu's candidature from Bellary in Karnataka.

The leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha used his blog to take on his Lok Sabha counterpart saying who is in or who is out were "relatively marginal issues".

He said the party should focus on the core issues of governance and anti-incumbency and on finding their solutions.

While Swaraj is the party's candidate from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, Jaitley is likely to contest from Amritsar. This will be the first time that Jaitley will be fighting a Lok Sabha election.
"Relatively marginal issues such as declaration of candidates particularly who is in and who is out cannot be allowed to dominate the political agenda in the BJP. These issues divert the attention from the core issues of governance," Jaitley wrote.

This comes a day after Swaraj openly tweeted her opposition to Sriramulu getting a seat after she had opposed his BSR Congress merging with BJP. "I want to make it absolutely clear that B Sriramulu has been admitted in the party despite my stiff opposition," she had tweeted on Friday night.

Sriramulu, a close friend of infamous Reddy brothers of Bellary who were chargesheeted in the mega mining scam, quit the BJP in 2012 to form BSR Congress Party.

Jaitley said, "The political debate is now centered around two basic issues: first, how will NDA cover the last mile to reach the 272 plus magic figure and secondly, nobody other than the NDA has a ghost chance of forming the next government."