New Delhi: While many are seeing the recent assembly election results in India’s Hindi heartland as a major blow to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its leader and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath has downplayed the saffron party’s defeat, saying the Congress has won through deceit, NDTV reported.
BJP has been pushed out of power in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh with Congress emerging as the single largest party in all three states – where Adityanath campaigned extensively leading up to the polls. The leader’s communal rhetoric, however, failed to garner the party enough votes.
“The Congress’s lies will start unravelling soon, and that will make our future battles even easier,” the firebrand BJP leader told reporters in Patna on Wednesday.
He added that despite people trying to “spread lies” in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, “we put up a good fight under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership” and people’s support will make “our fight ahead much easier.”
The UP chief minister further said that victories and defeats were part of the democratic process, but unlike their “rivals who practice serious double standards in this regard” the BJP “never basks in our victories while blaming our defeats on electronic voting machines.”
According to NDTV, Adityanath, however, brushed aside suggestions that his comments on Lord Hanuman’s caste had turned away voters. “I did not say anything about Bajrang Bali’s caste. I only said that Lord Hanuman resides in spirituality, and spirituality exists in people of all caste,” he was quoted as saying.
After voting ended in Rajasthan and Telangana on December 7, Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to alert his party workers to “be vigilant,” saying that in Madhya Pradesh, the voting machines “behaved strangely after polling” and that in “Modi’s India, the EVMs have mysterious powers.”
Congress party workers, it’s time to be vigilant.
In MP, EVMs behaved strangely after polling:
Some stole a school bus and vanished for 2 days. Others slipped away & were found drinking in a hotel.
In Modi’s India, the EVMs have mysterious powers.
Stay alert! pic.twitter.com/dhNeraAfxa
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) December 7, 2018
Modi, on his part, congratulated the Congress for its victory in assembly polls and said the BJP, which has suffered reverses in the elections, accepts people’s mandate with humility. In a tweet following the results, the prime minister also congratulated K. Chandrashekar Rao and the Mizo National Front for their respective wins in Telangana and Mizoram.
Congratulations to the Congress for their victories.
Congratulations to KCR Garu for the thumping win in Telangana and to the Mizo National Front (MNF) for their impressive victory in Mizoram.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) December 11, 2018
While BJP president Amit Shah extended wishes to KCR for the “impressive victory in Telangana assembly elections,” he has maintained a stark silence on the saffron party’s three major losses in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.