The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday criticised Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for his barb that the 2024 polls will be the “last election” in India if Prime Minister Narendra Modi is re-elected, stating that it was in fact “dynastic politics in the name of democracy” that was at an end and that “true democracy” was in the offing.
Mr. Kharge had, while addressing a rally in Bhubhaneswar on Monday, expressed apprehensions that the 2024 Lok Sabha election would be the last opportunity for the people to save democracy, and that “if Narendra Modi wins another election”, there will be dictatorship in the country. “The BJP will rule India like Putin in Russia,” he had said at the rally.
Speaking at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi responded to the barb saying, “Dynastic politics under the garb of democracy is coming to an end, and they are wondering what will be their future.”
“Whether it is Abdullah and Mufti families in Jammu and Kashmir, or the Badals in Punjab, the Hooda family in Haryana, all of them lost elections. Ashok Gehlot’s son also lost, Akhilesh Yadav’s wife lost election, in Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter lost election, or the biggest symbol of dynastic politics Rahul Gandhi lost election,” Mr. Trivedi said.
Mr. Trivedi asserted that “only two Prime Ministers were elected democratically in India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi”, and that India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was elected to the post with “zero votes”.
He said that in April 1946, at the Congress Working Committee meeting, out of 16 Congress committees, all votes except two went to India’s first Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
“Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also chosen as PM by the Congress president and not elected by people,” he said.
“Did Indira Gandhi come to power through votes? No, she first became the Prime Minister by an internal decision of the Congress,” he said, adding that late Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister as he got the sympathy vote in the aftermath of his mother Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
