The mandate has given a unanimous decision across the country. The public bestowed its faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the same sentiment can be seen in all the states, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has witnessed a clean sweep victory. The subject is not only about the Congress, but all the Opposition parties have failed to rein in the saffron party.
Except in the southern states, the rest of the country has given its mandate in favour of Modi. We congratulate the BJP. Imagine the extent to which the common public has suffered, the impact of demonetisation in which 100-125 citizens died. Or when the GST was implemented and the repercussions it has had on our economy, these mistakes should not be repeated and the BJP needs to ensure they are not repeated.
Moreover, we expect it to take certain corrective and preventive measures to ensure they do not repeat the mistakes they made it during the Modi 1.0. Over the last five years, the way the democracy has been threatened, constitutional institutions have been throttled, the environment has been stifled and all institutions are made to dance to the Modi’s tunes. This has been a larger picture of our country.
PM Modi now needs to take steps to change the scenario and reinstate faith through his demeanour. Every election and result should be aimed at strengthening the fundamentals of our democracy. We also hope that PM Modi and his cabinet colleagues will stop gagging the media and allow them to inform the public in free and fair manner.
The current results for the Maharashtra Congress is completely shocking. No doubt, we will definitely have to introspect and assess where we might have wronged. We seem to have fallen short in channelising the widespread distress in our state–agrarian, lack of jobs and no employment, the unrest among the minorities and their fears for security, which we could not tap.
This has led to lack of trust among people regarding our parties. People seemed to have bestowed their faith in Modiji. Now, the challenge for us is to win back the trust of the people. We will have to take positive steps to reinstate peoples’ faith. BJP has tried to mislead people saying nepotism exists in the Congress and its allies.
At the same time, this party has given a ticket to Sujay Vikhe-Patil and has even taken Ranjitsingh Mohite Patil into the partyfold. It needs to be seen how seriously their claims need to be taken. It is not that the BJP has been honest about dynasty claims it is alleging against us.
Speaking of dynasty, Devendra Fadnavis is also a part of this same dynasty politics, Pritam and Pankaja Munde, Eknath Khadse’s daughter, Poonam Mahajan, are these all not part of dynasty politics?
The BJP should not be accusing the Congress of dynasty politics all the time when it has also imbibed the same belief. We only seem to have fallen short of countering their attack about nepotism and dynasty politics, which the BJP too has followed.
The Bahujan Vanchit Party has unfurled the chakravyuha of dividing the secular vote, it is obvious from their agenda. They were fielded by the BJP only to divide votes and they used it well. We will study closely the constituencies which have been affected by their candidates.
Ashok Chavan and Sushilkumar Shinde have definitely lost due to VBA, that is a fact, but along with these, we also need to study how many other seats too have been impacted by the VBA. This party has definitely helped the BJP even though the chief of this party, Prakash Ambedkar lost in both the seats he contested. It’s not that he benefitted personally. He is like a suicide bomber, whose only purpose was to damage the Congress badly even if it is at the cost of his prospects.
The way the Assembly election is fought is always differwent from the Lok Sabha election. We have seen in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The victory of the Congress in the three state assembly elections last year is evidence enough to point out the diffrence.
The incumbent governments were ousted in the assembly elections, and later people voted for Modiji. They have made a distinction. The one aspect which I feel needs to be strengthened is in a strong and healthy democracy there is a role for the opposition parties. They need to be formidable and I think in today’s situation in our country, it is the responsibility of our voters to ensure the opposition remains formidable.
We will also have to make efforts to make ourselves formidable and I am confident of it. For this, we will have to strengthen our party from the grassroots level. Modi has given BJP a professional outlook.
Another important factor is, we are fighting against a party which is extremely rich (financially). We are up against a party that professes, saam dam dand bhed (advice, bribery, punishment and exploitation) and more so, instead working as a party with different leaders, they all work with Modi’s masks.
—Sachin Sawant is a Congress spokesperson.
