Even as the BJP comes to term with its defeat in the Delhi Assembly Elections, winning only 8 seats against Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) 62, union minister Prakash Javadekar has put the blame of the party’s failure on the Congress.
“The defeat in Delhi elections was because of the sudden disappearance of the Congress. It is a different subject whether the Congress disappeared (on its own), people made it disappear or whether their votes got transferred (to AAP),” Javadekar said at a press conference in Pune on Friday.
He said the Congress, which had got 26% votes in Lok Sabha elections, could win only 4% votes in Delhi elections.
For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter, Facebook, and subscribe to our newsletter.
The BJP had seemed confident of forming a government in the capital, but that failed to happen. Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari had rejected exit poll predictions of an AAP win. Before polling, he had said his “sixth sense” told him the BJP would form government in Delhi.
Javadekar’s reasoning is one among many that BJP leaders have cited for their defeat.
“Because of Congress’s disappearance, there was a direct fight between the BJP and the AAP. We had expected 42% votes for us and 48% for AAP, but our prediction failed by 3% each. We (BJP) got 39% votes, while the AAP received 51% votes,” Javadekar said.
Tiwari told ABP News that the BJP should have chosen a chief ministerial candidate before going into the polls.
While the BJP led a hate-filled campaign, baying for the blood of anti-CAA protesters — with Kapil Mishra and Anurag Thakur saying ‘goli maro’, Amit Shah saying ‘send current’ to Shaheen Bagh and Parvesh Sharma saying ‘they will rape your sisters’ — Home Minister Shah admitted that such hate speech should not have been made during the campaign.
Such remarks may have resulted in the party’s defeat in the elections, he admitted during a programme organised by Times Now.
The BJP leaders had vilified anti-CAA protesters, especially at Shaheen Bagh, while the AAP had contested on the issue of bijli, paani and shiksha.
AAP was voted back to for the third time in a row, with a resounding victory and a decisive mandate of the people who rejected BJP’s hate campaign.