New Delhi, Apr 15 (Agencies): Commenting on reports of Congress President Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Gandhi's willingness to contest elections from Varanasi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Monday said that Gandhi would have been thrashed if she had done so as she drinks too much alcohol and has a bad name.
"They saved her. She would have got a thrashing. She is very unpopular, she drinks too much alcohol and she has a bad name, her husband has a bad name," said Swamy.
On Sunday, Swamy had called Gandhi an ungrateful daughter for going to see the prisoners in jail who assassinated her own father. He also said that it was Priyanka and not Varun Gandhi who has gone astray and had added that the former and her party were not able to digest the latter’s success.
On Saturday, while accompanying Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi at Amethi while filing nomination papers, Priyanka had said that Varun Gandhi has chosen a wrong path and needed to be led in the right direction.
Later, the BJP said it wished Priyanka Gandhi had contested against Modi as the country needed the "myth" around her to be "exploded" and slammed Congress as just "a crowd around a family" which sees no other option but her after Rahul Gandhi did not click.
BJP leader Arun Jaitley said the situation was akin to what happened in 1977 polls as the family charisma has faded away and economic populism did not work.
"But a party which is merely a crowd around a family probably felt that the current leader in the family has not clicked. The real solution to the problem is to make Congress a more structured party.
"The Congress party solution is, if one incumbent in the family fails, the alternative can only be another member of the family...I had almost predicted this. I only wish that the desperate solution of Varanasi had been actually implemented. The country now needs the myth of the other family member also to be exploded," Jaitley said in an article.
His remarks came even as the Gandhi scion denied having any intentions of contesting elections, trashing reports that she wanted to challenge Modi for the Lok Sabha seat from Varanasi and was stopped by the party high command.
She said it is a "personal" decision not to contest and that her family would "wholeheartedly support" her if she ever wanted to.