New Delhi : “The soul of democracy is consensus, it is simply not numbers. Even if you have numbers, you have to try and reach out to other people and try and take them along. Democracy and ‘darr’ (fear) do not go together,” said former Union Minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha at an event here today.In the eye of a political storm since his recent critique of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and the government’s “economic mess”, Sinha remains defiant. He was speaking on the occasion of release of senior Congress leader Manish Tewari’s new book – Tidings of Troubled Times. On stage, the two shared space with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while dismissing off speculation of any political realignment.Central to their remarks was “Modinomics” and “atmosphere of fear”in the country. Kejriwal set the ball rolling with criticism of demonetisation and GST, throwing figures of job losses.“There is an atmosphere of fear that I have never seen before across the country. We do not know how many ED and I-T notices have been sent out. This is a ‘raid raj’ like never before,” said Kejriwal.
Taking on his party, Sinha said the government tried pitting his son and minister Jayant against him to divert attention from real issues, but it failed else “a certain gentleman would not have spoken for an hour and fifteen minutes yesterday”, hinting at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech yesterday.Without naming Modi, Sinha said he had been called ‘Shalya’ of Mahabharata, but it was only ‘Duryodhan’ and ‘Dushashan’ who were the most infamous brothers among the Kaurva clan. Sinha said he wouldn’t mind if party acted against him, though he had not done anything to deserve it.On the Opposition getting its act together, Manish Tewari reminded the audience, “Politics is all about probabilities and probabilities are eternal”. The Delhi CM claimed the “battle of 2019 will be BJP versus rest of the country”.