NEW DELHI, Mar 11: A blame game erupted in the Congress on Friday over its Assembly polls debacle even as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pushed for an opposition alliance to take on the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, a day after the saffron party stormed back to power in Uttar Pradesh and retained three other states.
Fresh from the poll victories that consolidated the BJP’s position, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a roadshow in Ahmedabad in his home state as his open car, decorated with floral garlands, traversed the 10-km distance from the airport to Kamalam, the state BJP headquarters. Assembly polls are due to be held in Gujarat towards the end of this year.
Modi attributed the BJP’s impressive performance in the four states to people voting for development, which he stressed, should be the top priority of elected representatives in a democracy. He said voters in the four states have now realised that governments are elected for doing development.
The prime minister was addressing over one lakh representatives from the three tiers of the Panchayati Raj institutions in the state at a ‘Panchayat Mahasammelan’ in Ahmedabad.
The BJP as well as the AAP, which bagged Punjab decimating the traditional parties Congress and the Akali Dal by getting three-fourths majority, meanwhile, shifted their focus towards Government formation.
As the Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) eyes a national role, party sources said Bhagwant Mann will take oath as the chief minister of Punjab on March 16 at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of iconic freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. Mann also met the party’s national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the national capital.
Former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh hit out at the Congress for blaming the anti-incumbency of his four-and-half-years tenure for the poor show in assembly polls, saying the party’s leadership will never learn.
Singh, the Punjab Lok Congress chief and a former Congress leader who was unseated from the post of chief minister last year, asked the Congress who is responsible for its drubbing in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
“The @INCIndia leadership will never learn! Who is responsible for the humiliating defeat of Congress in UP? What about Manipur, Goa, Uttrakhand? The answer is written in BOLD LETTERS on the wall but as always I presume they will avoid reading it,” said Singh in a tweet.
Singh’s remark came a day after Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said that in Punjab, even though the party presented a humble, clean and grounded leadership, it failed to overcome the anti-incumbency of 4.5 years of Amarinder Singh government and people voted for change.
Another Congress leader ‘Americai’ V Narayanan said the top leadership should step aside and make way for a new leadership as the writing is on the wall.
The AICC member, also a Congress spokesperson, rued that the party fumbled in the election with “mismanagement” of the party.
Some leaders of the ‘Group of 23’ that had questioned the party leadership and sought organisational overhaul, met at the residence of former Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Among the leaders that met at Azad’s residence included party MPs Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari.
Sources said the leaders will discuss the party’s poor performance at the hustings and will evolve their future strategy going forward.
The leaders held their deliberations ahead of the Congress Working Committee(CWC) meeting to be convened by party chief Sonia Gandhi shortly to assess the party’s performance. The Congress drew a blank losing all the five states.
Chief Minister Banerjee said it is for the Congress to decide on what the party wants to do.
At the same time, the TMC supremo reached out to regional parties to push for an anti-BJP alliance, saying there was no point in waiting for the Congress as it lacked ‘fire in the belly’.
“I feel all the political parties who want to fight against the BJP must work together. There is no point in depending on Congress,” she told reporters in Kolkata.
She said the Congress was “earlier capable of winning as it had an organization.”
However, Banerjee said, “they are now losing everywhere. It doesn’t seem they are interested anymore (in winning). They have lost credibility, and there is no point in depending on them.”
She further said there were many strong regional parties, implying they could together be a more effective force.
Asked about the performance of the Congress in the five states, Banerjee said, “It is for them to decide on what they want to do. But I think all opposition parties must come together to defeat the BJP. There is no need to wait for the Congress.”
A non-Congress leader from the opposition camp, on condition of anonymity, said the Congress needs to realise that either it strengthens itself as an organisation to have that place in the opposition or it will have to standby and support those parties which have that capacity to be able to pull off an election.
Banerjee also rejected views of a section of BJP leaders who claimed that the victory in the four states reflects people’s mood for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. “The BJP should stop daydreaming.”
Poll strategist Prashant Kishor said the Assembly poll results will not have any bearing on the next Lok Sabha elections as the “battle for India would be fought and decided in 2024 and not in any state elections”.
Kishor’s comment came a day after Modi said he hopes that political pundits will note that his party’s win in the four states has also made clear the verdict for the next general elections as they had linked its win in 2019 to its sweep of the UP polls in 2017.
Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, meanwhile, termed the assembly poll results as unfortunate, but put up a brave face asserting that the party will win back the confidence of people soon.
UP Chief Minister Adityanath chaired the last meeting of his outgoing cabinet and thanked the people of the state for extending their support to the BJP, an official spokesperson said in Lucknow.
He also thanked Prime Minister Modi for his leadership and guidance, the spokesperson said.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant held a meeting of his Cabinet during which it was decided to recommend dissolution of the House on March 14.
Overcoming anti-incumbency, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the coastal state by winning 20 seats, just one short of the halfway mark, and quickly enlisted the support of regional outfit MGP and three Independent MLAs to form its Government for a third consecutive term. The MGP has two MLAs.
In Uttarakhand, the poll outcome has presented the BJP with a dilemma of sorts as it weighs various options after outgoing chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lost the election even as the party stormed back to power with him being talked about by its top leaders as the choice for the hot seat again if it retains power.
In Manipur, outgoing Chief Minister N Biren Singh said the new government will be formed before March 19 when the current state assembly term ends and a decision on who will lead is expected to be decided in the next couple of days.
National People’s Party, a partner in the existing government which won seven seats, will not be a part of the new dispensation, Singh told reporters in Imphal. (PTI)
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