Father, son and a denial

The Sinhas of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it appears, are on a warpath. Senior party leader Yashwant Sinha was quoted as having said at the Difficult Dialogues conference that "the people of India will consign him to the dust, you just have to wait for the next elections", without putting a name to "him". Sinha is one of the four party veterans who, after the Bihar debacle, had criticised the centralisation of decision-making in the BJP and so most people were inclined to conclude the "he" meant the prime minister. In a series of tweets on Sunday, Jayant Sinha, Yashwant Sinha's son and minister of state for finance, was quick to point out that his father had been misquoted. For corroboration, he retweeted BJP leader Shazia Ilmi's tweet that she was present at the conference and Sinha senior was indeed misquoted. There was eventually a denial from Yashwant Sinha as well. "Anyone who has reported this has completely misunderstood what I have said," he said.