Cracks opening up in India's BJP in heat of polling season

IN the run-up to the general election, multiple influential voices have emerged from within India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a development that has cautioned Indians about its policies and performance. For a disciplined party such as the BJP, open dissent is not common.

Several party leaders have criticised the party for its grave errors since 2017, and this is ongoing. Senior party leader Yashwant Sinha, the finance minister twice in previous BJP-led governments, blames current finance minister Arun Jaitley for the "mess" he has made of the economy through opinion pieces in the mainstream media. In a now-famous 2017 The Indian Express column, Mr Sinha criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2016 move to demonetise the currency, and the "badly conceived" Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Mr Sinha correctly predicted two years ago that the economy would not be revived by the time of the 2019 general election, a claim that has been vindicated by a sluggish economy, massive unemployment and the government's efforts to black out employment data. He has also declared that BJP members were not raising their voices "out of fear".