Jaitley's defeat in Amritsar draws comparison to Rao's 1984 loss

New Delhi: With the defeat of Arun Jaitley in his maiden electoral battle, Amritsar has become a sort of ‘Hanamkonda’ for the BJP. Hanamkonda was the constituency in Andhra Pradesh from where P V Narasimha Rao had contested in 1984 and had lost the elections when there was a major upsurge in favour of Congress almost all over the country. [caption id=“attachment_1528627” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File picture of Arun Jaitley. AFP[/caption] Rao was defeated by little known C Janga Reddy of BJP at a time when Congress won as many as 414 Lok Sabha seats in the wake of assassination of Indira Gandhi. Rao was later elected from Ramtek in Maharashtra. In the elections, BJP had received a shock of its life by gaining just two seats all over the country. Other seat was in Gujarat from where A K Patel had won. This time Narendra Modi wave swept several parts of India including the north but Jaitley lost convincingly in Amritsar against former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh despite Modi campaigning for him. As Rao had become an important Cabinet minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government, Jaitley is also tipped to find a place in the Modi government. The talk is that he might get the key portfolio of Finance due to his closness to Modi. Jaitley, who has been Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, is a member of the Upper House from Gujarat. PTI