Veteran leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party Yashwant Sinha on Saturday lashed out at what he said was a lack of dialogue between the Narendra Modi-led central government and the Opposition. Sinha said that the current National Democratic Alliance government will face an abysmal defeat in the next general elections, similar to the one former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Congress government was handed after the 1975-77 Emergency, PTI reported.

Addressing an audience at a conference on "Difficult Dialogues" in Goa, the former finance minister said without naming Modi, “The people of India will consign him to the dust; you just have to wait for the next elections.” He added that under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the NDA government had been able to pass several important legislations with the help of dialogue with the Opposition.

However, Sinha later backtracked and said reporters had misunderstood what he was trying to say. He said that dialogue cannot be dead in a country where democracy is strong and thriving. Sinha also said that his reference to the Emergency was in response to a few cases of intolerance that were brought up. “I reminded them...that people of this country taught [Indira Gandhi] a lesson in [the] 1977 [elections]...it is not in our spirit to stifle dialogue,” he told ANI.