Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has told CNN-News18 that the Congress party and its allies would go to any extent to say that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) impending victory in 2024 is not legitimate, and added that the people of the country will punish them with numbers they would not be proud of.
In an interview, she was asked if the Congress was already preparing excuses like EVM rigging or polling turnout discrepancies to justify why it lost. “I would be concerned and worried about it, it is just not an excuse. Look at the way in which so many different forces are all out coming together and also probably receiving implicit support from the Congress party, and from the communists, to delegitimise this election, election process and results of this election,” Sitharaman told CNN-News18 in the interview.
The Finance Minister said that Congress is now a party which is full of hate for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, so they are going to any extent to prove that this victory is not legitimate. “The people of the country will squarely punish them, you will see that their results are not going to be that they can take pride on, they are going on the wrong route,” Sitharaman told CNN-News18. She said Congress did not like PM Modi since his days as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, “and now they have crossed all levels of decency and propriety.”
“They want to deny Prime Minister Modi, at least from their end or so they think, victory. People of India have chosen somebody and people of India have chosen which party has to come to power. Now, if because somebody is funding you from outside — NGOs come together, the communists come together, all Congress party sympathisers come together – to say this victory is not legitimate,” she said.
Sitharaman said it was not an excuse but trying to discredit India’s electoral process was in fact a serious offence. “This hypocrisy is just not remaining in comments, it is going into certain disruptive activities which is very worrying. Being a responsible opposition party is what I thought of the Congress. Now, they have become a handmade to the disruptive forces of the country,” Sitharaman told CNN-News18.
She said the BJP’s charge of Congress being aligned with the ‘tukde-tukde’ gang was being proved. “Congress is no longer the party which claimed with other groups that they won freedom for India. It is no longer that movement that Congress was. They are trying to project and they would go to any extent from the kind of statements that are coming, to delegitimise this entire election process and undermine our institutions,” Sitharaman told CNN-News18.
She said that the Congress had won Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh by the same electoral process but now they were not ready to believe it for the general elections.
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