Smriti Irani: Sushma Swaraj in the making?

NEW DELHI: That BJP vice president and former soap star Smriti Irani would be taking on Rahul Gandhi in Amethi in the Lok Sabha polls was something that was in the works for nearly a week. No great mystery in that. What has surprised many is the way her star has shot up on the BJP firmament, where she has gone from being a Modi critic in 2004 to being one of his closest supporters ten years later. So much so that she is now poised to take on Sushma Swaraj’s mantle in the party.

“Smriti Irani’s political journey has been interesting. In 2004 she threatened to go on a hunger strike if Modi did not apologise for the post Godhra riots. She recanted the same day but was considered close to the Maharashtra leadership, first the Pramod Mahajan camp, later Nitin Gadkari. In the last few years, even as leaders like Vijay Goel and others kept harping on how L K Advani was the tallest leader in the party, she started batting vocally for Modi," said a senior BJP leader. “She speaks Gujarati too, which helps, and is destined for bigger things even if she loses these elections and Modi wins,” he added.

The Smriti Irani-Rahul Gandhi fight in Amethi is already being likened to the Sushma Swaraj-Sonia Gandhi face off in Bellary in 1999. At that time Swaraj, was pitted against Gandhi on a seat which the Congress had not lost since elections were first held in independent India. A whirlwind, high profile campaign saw Swaraj give a real scare to the Congress, lose by a historically low margin of about 45,000 votes for that seat, and made sure that the Congress never won the seat again. The fracas that followed with the Gali brothers of Bellary is of course another story.


Watch: Smriti Irani confident of Amethi victory




“What that fight did was establish the party as a serious contender in the area, Swaraj was high profile therefore we got people in the organisation quickly,” said a source.

Will all of this happen in Amethi? We need to wait and see. Irani checks the right boxes for a full out campaign – she speaks well, is close to Narendra Modi so will be able to get him to hold a high profile rally or two, and her proximity to the top leadership could help set up some organizational structure for the party in the area. Most of all, she signals, as it was in 1999, that the gloves are off and battle has been joined in earnest.